Beauty and the Beast at Buttonwillow

[sk7500]

Wow! What a great day I had at the track. I want to thank Richard a Yvonne and all the crew at PDG for letting me hang around and the great food. I hope I didn't get in the way too much and I really appreciated the hospitality. You guys really made the day special.
I have always been of the car show persuasion. So hanging around a race team was a new experience. Of course I have watched races before, but it's not the same as when you know the people. To see the emotional roller coaster of the people involved with the excitement and danger of the actual race playing out in the background, is quit an experience.

The other thing I wanted to share is what a phenomenal job Mike did driving the car. I have driven on that track and I can tell you that after about ten laps at half his speed (at least I hope 1/2 his speed. Probably not) I was both mentally and physically drained. Mike got out of the car after 3 hours and looked like he just came back from the corner store. (Of course with his smooth driving, he doesn't work as hard as me.;-)). And he was pushing that GTM screaming fast. The car looks so awesome at speed. We shot some video at practice I hope we can post soon.

And the last thing I noticed was how the PDG team does so much with so little. Looking around the pits, they are running up against some well funded teams. Yet at the end of the day they still walk away with the trophy and bragging rights. They are the GTM ambassadors and they do us all proud. My hats off to you guys.

[GTM RACER]

great pic and title! Nice to read an observation from your position. Many people just don't know the experience and BOY! it is WILD! Everyone likes to win, but aside to that, it is the journey and then that final destination. Personally, I like the "behind the scenes" part and the decision making.

[crash]

Steve- Thanks so much for coming out and bringing the GTM. As always with these cars, pictures just do not do them justice. Steve's car is VERY well detailed and, IMHO, one of the best finished GTMs I have seen so far. Sure there are a few little details that need to be done, but when you take a close look at things like the doors, front and rear lighting setups, roof scoop, engine bay, interior, wheel openings, vent grilles, etc, etc, it becomes very apparent that this car has just so much time and TLC put into it that it is almost inconceivable. The finished product, or nearly finished product, is absolutely gorgeous. I envy these guys that have the patients to do this extremely detailed work. Yeah I do big changes, but to see the umpteen different details on this car and realize what EACH ONE entails just blows my mind. There are indeed some true craftsmen involved with building these cars, and Steve's GTM is an excellent example of this.

Thanks for the compliments and the observations. As you can see from coming to an event, these things take a LOT of $$ to run, even at our budget level, and I think most people that are fans of racing really do not understand this. The other thing is the time spent on the car to make it work and to improve on things. Jim Haussler, Richard and Yvonne Migliori, Ian Kirkland from Mendeola Transaxles, and myself, along with many "come by the shop in their free time" volunteers work our butts off to make sure this car runs and finishes strong at every event.

The practice video of the car on track probably won't do the PDG GTM justice as I was WAY off the pace since we were running the track counter clockwise as opposed to the way we almost always run it, which is clockwise. Buttonwillow is not all that fun of a track counter clockwise because the two tight corners end up being decreasing radius turns and also have significant crowns in the pavement, so not easy to learn. Then they changed the configuration again from what we practiced in the morning to what we actually raced in the 3 hour, so it took me a bit to learn the track, but by the end of the 3 hours, I think I had it pretty well figured out! :)

Thanks to all that make this car and these events happen for us...Mendeola Transaxles, Team PDG, Baja Designs Lighting, and, of course, Factory Five Racing. Without all the volunteers and sponsors, we simply could not participate in these events. THANK YOU!

[vnmsss]

Big congratulations to Team PDG for their ES class win, and 2nd place overall finish in the 3-Hour enduro on Saturday night. Mike, you did a fantastic job driving, and logged some very impressive lap times. The entire team should be just beaming! You did us all proud!!!

Karen

[sk7500]

Mike,
Congratulations again and thank you for the kind words about the car. We worked really hard to try and make changes that enhanced the car and I tried to do it at a level that the changes were not obvious to the casual observer. We just wanted the car to look good as a whole. But when a trained eye gets into the picture, well ya just can't hide everything. :o

I sent you a PM. Let me know what you think.