[Spridgets] 2011 Targa car and 2010 story in a nutshell...

[Ron Soave]

The car this year is a 1997 BMWW M3, the original ebay listing was:

www.tinyurl.com/soavebmw (I ended up buying it privately)

Background:

Many of you will recall that Jeff Porasik and I went to drive Targa Newfoundland along with the great Dave Woerpel as crew to race in 2010. The car we were asked to drive was a 1953 Studebaker Starliner. Without getting into detail or reasons why the owner is now dead to me, the car was prepped with many of us helping. The car was not ready for a trip around the block (literally; I don't think it made one pass successfully) let alone one of the more grueling 2200 Km races on the planet. Targa is also NOT a vintage race rally. Some do TSD with vintage cars, but more for the tour and scenery than to win. If you bring a vintage car, it needs to be well-prepared to even finish. To make a very long story short, by the night before the rally's official start, the car broke hard. Without implicating anyone who may have endorsed this, we were able to re-enter in a class with much lower speeds and no safety equipment required. To get around the small issue of not
 having a car, we rented a 2010 Dodge Charger and disguised it with racing decals all over it. We did TSD (time-speed-distance)) and had the most fun imaginable. Pics are here, we are #1035 Black Charger:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2088160&id=1341954812&l=c2f3023c6f

So we had a blast. We became somewhat notorious, and seem to have made it into most video accounts of the race. We put on a pretty good show hustling the car around, and were told by a race official we were one of only two cars to put wheels up in the air on one of the town stages on Day 1. 

So we're in the full-race, go as fast as you can class this year with my brother Rob navigating. I'm trying to convince Porasik to race with another friend, but I'm not having much success. Despite the fact that we were about to strangle each other by week's end, we are like brothers and I wish he were going as well, but "Legalize Shemp Racing" will still be at road courses around the midwest this summer, and likely back together at Targa in 2012, job-willing.

So there it is. Back to shoveling.

Ron
Team Soave Racing
4 Doors, 2 Brothers, No Brains
A operating subsidiary of Team Thicko