Shiva at Spring Mountain Raceway, Pahrump, NV, March 22, 2008

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Reasons why I should be invited to the 2008 GRM UTCC (Grassroots Motorsports Ultimate Track Car Challenge).

1. Shiva is a Mini Cooper S - the giant killer.
2. I'm a card carrying AARP member - geezers need respect.
3. I'm a track day junkie and scary fast.
4. My full race prepped John Cooper Works Mini Cooper S will be one of the safest vehicles in the field.
5. I started reading GRM when it was still a folio sized newsprint fishwrapper back in Florida in the 80's and I was autocrossing a Honda CRX. Good times! ARRRRrrrrrr!

Chapter 1 - Sad Arthur II arrives in January 2005

When the BMW engineers added a limited slip differential as an option for the 2005 MCS, it made my 2004 JCW MCS obsolete. Luckily my wife agreed and Sad Arthur II was picked up in the Chicago area and broken in on the way back to California. Already enamored of the handling characteristics of the little supercharged screamer, SA II continued to be the test mule for my driver education program. It is my firm belief that the best mod you can make to any car is to tweak the carbon unit and so I enrolled in 2 Jim Russell race schools and continued doing track day events at 9 tracks around California and Nevada.

Sad Arthurs I and II get acquainted in Berkeley

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Chapter 2 - Trackdays

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Starting with SA 1 in the fall of 2003, we hit the track as much as possible. That's a lot with three world class tracks within two hours of the SF Bay Area: Laguna Seca in Monterey, Infineon at Sears Point and Thunderhill in Willows. Altogether through two permutations of Mini, we have done over 500 trackdays in the last 5 years. We advanced slowly up the ladder from HPDE 1 to 2 to 3 to 4, then to Time Trials with NASA. Along the way I started instructing and fell in love with it. Luckily I don't get carsick and I've been off so many times and wrecked so many cars that the danger of strapping into a perfect stranger's right seat and showing him/her how to go fast on a racetrack just doesn't bother me any more. And all the time these thousands of laps were going into muscle memory and helping me to go faster.

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Chapter 3 - The Mods

It wasn't long before the car started talking to me about what it needed to go faster. The supercharged 1.6 liter 4 was plenty strong, but the car wasn't balanced well. The first to go were the run flat tires and the heavy stock wheels. Next it was a bigger rear sway bar and then we reached the limits of the John Cooper Works suspension and it was time for a full bore suspension upgrade: Koni coil over shocks, Hotchkiss camber plates, ALTA front tower brace, Alta front sway bar and a Stop Tech big brake kit. Finally, I added 17 X 7.5 SSR wheels so I could run 235/40/17 tires (stock size is 205/45/17)for the biggest possible footprint. By the summer of 2007 I was getting this new system pretty well checked out and in full play and the lap times were still going down. In addition, I had learned to fly.

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Chapter 4 - The Wreck

After improving all year in NASA's Time Trials (I eventually placed third for the season) I met my nemesis in Turn 7 at Infineon on the last weekend of the racing year. I put the car up on two wheels and then flipped it over on its back to avoid another driver. End of season. End of car, for that matter since all agreed it was a totaled wreck. Bummer.

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Chapter 5 - Phoenix rising

This is the best time to have another brain on the job. My friend and expert Mini tweaker, Jacques Andres of Bay Bridge Motors in Oakland, had a closer look one evening at the shop and called me to say he was going to try some chassis pulls and if they turned out OK, there might be a way to save the car. The question was did I want to invest the money? I briefly toyed with the idea of parting the Mini out and just buying a race Miata, but the thought of sitting in a swarm of buzzing Miatas going as fast as possible and having a Mini dive through like a dog through a flock of pigeons was just anathema to me. So I pulled the trigger and at the same time decided to go all the way. We gutted the interior, added a Recaro seat, a 6 point racing harness, fire extinguisher, master cutoff switch and a full roll cage. Sad Arthur was reborn as Shiva, the Destroyer; lighter, stronger and with a new paint scheme.

Shiva

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Chapter 6 USTCC

Now we're getting to the good stuff. My laptimes caught the attention of the US Touring Car Championship folks and I was invited to join their pro series. Pro - that's where they pay you for racing. So along with my sponsors, Mini Mania and Bay Bridge Motors, I moved up to the big time. All I have to do to qualify for my national NASA racing license is to complete four incident free races. Three down and one to go at Thunderhill this weekend. Stay tuned.

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to be continued . . .