Grassroots Motorsports $2006 Challenge - by Sean K. Banerjee

Building a racecar can be expensive and time consuming.  Building a race car that can not only handle like its on rails for auto-x, but also rocket down the strip in the 1/4 mile while looking like its straight out of a showroom can be a quite a challenge.  Now, throw in a meager $2006 budget, a time frame of 6 months and this task really becomes a challenge. 

The Grassroots Motorsports $200x Challenge presented by Kumho Tires, held at Gainesville Raceway, Florida brings together teams and their home brewed racecars to compete against each other in a three part competition - a traditional auto-x, a drag race down the 1/4 mile strip and a concourse section.  Teams are permitted to spend no more than $2006 to buy, repair, modify, build their race cars.  This year's competition was held from October 26-28, 2006, a total of 62 cars entered the event ranging from the simple Honda and Toyota, to classic muscle cars like the Mustang and even Frankenstein monsters like a fiber glass shelled MR2 and a small block V8 powered Datsun 260Z. 

I competed in the challenge this year, along with Southern West Virginia Region of the SCCA (SWVRSCCA) Activities Director Martin Valent, in a 1988 Honda CRX Si.  This story is my perspective as a competitor in a car that was driven 2500 miles (round trip) from Charleston, WV to Gainesville, Fl and then pushed to its limits.  In order to safely drive the car to Florida and back with no other support vehicle required hours and hours of work to ensure everything was safe.

The story begins back in April 2006 when Bill Gammon, a member at SWVRSCCA, handed over the keys to his 1988 Honda CRX Si.  Bill's CRX had been spend many years being autoxed and tracked at Gartersnake Raceway.  Physically the car was in terrible shape, body damage and rust had taken a toll.  The interior of the car was completely destroyed and there were many mechanical gremlins.  Despite having a set of Koni double adjustable shocks, Neuspeed race springs and a Recaro race seat the car was impossible to sell.  I had recently purchased a CRX Si and was running in the GS class and was looking into the Koni shocks that were on Bill's CRX.  With Bill's CRX now in Martin's name we decided to swap over the shocks to my CRX and as the car sat in Martin's garage we began to talk about resurrecting the CRX and participate in the Grassroots Motorsports Challenge.

The car needed a large list of items to make it even remotely complete, the damage and rust were another story in itself.  On a short list we knew the car needed an interior, significant brake work, electrical work, interior work, engine work and a plethora of other odds and ends. 

The first item on the agenda was taking care of the rust, anyone that has owned a CRX of any vintage from the northern states knows rust is a big issue with these cars. The main area of damage being the quarter panels. Martin began tearing into the rust, removing body panel after body panel and grinding out the cancer.  Copious quantities of POR-15 were applied to prevent future rust and new parts were molded where the damage was too extreme.   I began researching the various parts needed to complete the car.

New interior pieces were upwards of $400 from the dealership even used door panels were upwards of $100 on Ebay.  Sunroofs were going for over $400 on Ebay, and taillights were at $60 a piece.  Given a budget of $2006 it was time to seek other avenues, namely Internet forums and salvage yards.  I hit gold on the Internet forums when I found a member on the Grassroots Motorsports forums who had a set of door panels and a sunroof for sale.  He only wanted $15 for both door panels and $25 for the sunroof.  The only problem he was in Cincinnati, I didn't care the price was challenge friendly.  Repeated visits to local junkyards proved fruitful as we began to collect the remaining mechanical and cosmetic pieces to complete the car.  The decision was made to repaint the car in its original red color, but red paint is extremely expensive.  Yet again we got lucky as Martin's neighbor had recently repainted a red Dodge RAM and had left over paint that he sold to us for $70.  The one remaining factor was race tires, but a quick call to Jon Kofod and he sent over a set of his lightly used Hankook Z214 C50 R Compound tires from his ITA Acura Integra.  

On August 27, 2006 the car made its first auto-x run in almost 4 years at the annual Auto-x for a Cure held at Washington Airport, PA.  Martin took the win in CSP and I would have finished second but rain played havoc on my runs as I dropped to third a mere 10ths behind the second place car that got dry runs.  The day was not without problems, as we struggled with our brakes.  The car still had its original pads and worn brake lines, the problem had to be remedied before the next event. 

Another quick call to Jon and he sent over a set of brand new Hawk HP Plus pads for the CRX, coupled with the new brake lines the car was braking 100% better.   The next event we had a few friends running the car and Martin and I had to run our regular auto-x cars in the point's event.  The car once again proved its excellence as Jason Vehige finished second, a mere 1.5 seconds behind the class winning 280+ hp Audi TT of Nate Manchin.  The third event for the car was again in the hands of Martin, Jason and Nate and once again the car proved its ability to go exceptionally fast.  Jason won in CSP with Nate and Martin following in second and third, but the more amazing feat was that Jason finished second in raw time behind a 400 hp Corvette Z06. 

The final shake down was at the BeaveRun Motorsports Complex for the final Steel Cities region point's event.  This time the drivers would be Martin, Dave Shepard and I against a very well prepared CSP Honda Civic.  Through most of the day Martin led the field, I in second place and the Civic bringing up third.  But, with the final runs the order changed as I dropped to third and on the final run of the day the Civic pulled to the CSP win by 15/1000th of a second.  Not a bad result at all for us considering the CRX only had $800 in it. 

After 6 months of hard work the time had come to load the car and head to Florida for the Challenge.  In true grassroots fashion we chose not to use a tow vehicle, instead load all necessary equipment and drive to Florida.  Given the distance to be traveled we chose to leave on October 22, 2006 to ensure we got there with enough time to fix any problems that might arise.  En route to Florida we once again began experiencing braking problems, but this time the issue was nothing more than badly warped rotors.  A quick stop to AutoZone and we had some brand new rotors for the competition. 

Day 1, October 27, was going to be the auto-x and concourse section, the concourse would be held on both days.  After a detailed wash and wax we headed to the judging tent.  While our car was one of the nicest looking cars there it didn't have anything spectacular on it, some other teams had scissor doors and other gizmos.  The judges decided our car looked good enough to get 17 out of 25 points, the winning car in the concourse got 23 out of 25 points.  The score was still good enough to land us in 43rd place in the concourse section out of 62 cars. 

The auto-x was next, Martin would take the first, third and fifth runs while I would take second and fourth.  Unfortunately, we weren't used to driving on an unmarked course and ended up posting fast time on the first run.  Martin went off course on his last two runs, while my first run was a half second slower than Martin's first I failed to capitalize on my second and last run as I coned it in an effort to lay down a fast time.  Despite the only clean run being on cold tires we posted a time of 48.046 seconds, putting us in 36th place out of 62 cars only 4 seconds behind the winner who got all clean runs.  Looking back it probably would have been better after the first off course to have one of the local drivers who had designed the course take a run. 

Day 2, October 28, would be the drag race and concourse judging.  Having never drag raced before it would be quite a learning experience trying to figure out how the launch tree worked at the start line.  Our fastest pass was a 15.978 putting us in 47th place out of 62 cars.  The fastest run was a 10.572 second run by the small block V8 powered Datsun 260Z.  The time pleased us immensely considering the car had no engine performance parts and was in fact running a stock intake, header and exhaust system.  At the end of the day we pulled over 25 runs on the Hankook tires, which held up amazingly well considering the number of auto-x runs and racing laps that were already on them.

At the end of the event we ended up in 41st place out of 62 cars in a car that had less than $800 in it and had been driven to Florida and back.  This journey would have never been a success without the help of our families and friends, in no specific order I'd like to thank them:

The Banerjee and Valent Family
Jon Kofod
Naomi Settle
Bill Gammon
Southern WV Region of the SCCA
Nate Manchin
Chris Carlisle
McB Autosport

In the end Martin and I traveled 2500 miles, spent 6.5 tanks of gas, traversed 12 states and were in 3 different hotels over a span of 7 days.  It was one heck of an adventure that I would undertake again in a heartbeat.