Sign Your Name Across My Heart

Five long years ago, my friends and family built me a brand-new Neon racer from a shell in twenty days. The car went on to finish ahead of the mid-pack in its debut. It was the only car to finish fifth or better (out of 29) in both wet and dry qualifying races for the 2008 National Championships. A bad tire valve cost us the Championship race itself, where I expected we could contend for the podium. In the races at the end of the season, the Neon managed a few podiums and a Performance Touring overall victory. Had I not been disciplined for contact, I would have won the regional championship in the car. As it was, even with two race results stricken from the record, I was 2nd.

And then, so to speak, the wheels fell off. An overly ambitious program of enhancements on the part of the car's co-owner, Mark, sidelined the Neon for most of 2009 as I raced everything from Lemons to Koni Challenge. Mark and I had a full-race DOHC engine built at considerable expense in 2010 but lost a whole season squabbling with the Megasquirt fuel-injection system. In 2011, 2012, and again this year, Mark and I had discussions about running the car and addressing its myriad of issues that came completely to naught.

Around June of this year, I decided I'd had enough, mostly because my friend Missy, who wanted to race the Neon with me, kept blowin' up my celly, yo. Time to take sole control of the program, pull the car out of storage, and send it to the Tinman.

One heart transplant, coming right up. She might be ready for Putnam Park in October, or Missy and I might just shake her down at Ledges a few times and rest secure in the knowledge we'll be racing come March. Either way it's going to be done. It feels like lifting a heavy weight and having a heavy weight lifted off me, all at once.

Green Baron Motorsports will come to an end; Missy and I will name the new team together as we attempt to win enduros in co-ed fashion. Sounds scary, really. Racing with a 25-year-old girl. What if she's faster than I am? We should be so lucky, I suppose.

The first shot in this story is the firewall of the Neon. When we were in the middle of the 20-day push in 2008, I asked everybody to sign the firewall before the engine was dropped in. There are about fifteen names in there, all people who gave a lot of time and effort to see me make the grid again. It's humbling sometimes to think about the lengths people will travel to help you when you really need it. If your name's on this car, thank you again. Every lap we turn in the future will be because of you.

I've done plenty of racing in the years that the 187 Neon slept, but there's something about having your own name on your own car that makes a difference. Like it or not, I'm a racer. It's what I've been for a long time. It's what I am, still. May it long be so.