Case study Number One: The 1998 Long Beach Grand Prix CART race. By some stroke of luck, Matt and I have been invited to the Honda hospitality tent for lunch. We're chowing down on the free grub. Driver Dario Franchitti (who would later go on to win 1998 Rookie of the Year) walks into the tent wearing his spiffy green driving suit. Matt and I are in awe. Here's a guy with such outstanding eye-hand coordination that Team Kool Green trusts him with an 800hp Honda Champ car.Dario walks over to the buffet table and loads up his plate with spaghetti. Then, something remarkable happens. Just as he's about to sit down, Dario tilts his plate too much, and the spaghetti slides completely off the plate and all over his driving suit.
Case study Number Two: Dec. '98's Import & Compact Showdown at Moroso Motorsports Park. Afternoon showers have ended the race, and we're leaving the track in our rental car. Traffic is heavy. Up ahead, we spot a white Porsche 911 with Toyo stickers plastered all over it. It's Eddie Bello! Throughout race day, Eddie's '93 Porsche was pulling First- and Second-gear wheelies and ripping off 9-second quarter-mile times. Now he's driving his Porsche home-no trailer queen here. This guy has the ultimate street car. Suddenly, traffic is slowing down...except Eddie. He doesn't quite stop in time and rear-ends the car in front of him. Oops.
Case study conclusion: No matter how "celeb" someone appears to be, they still put their pants on one leg at a time. The only difference is that their pants are usually a lot nicer than ours.
Eddie's slight dip into normal-guy world was only temporary, and his Porsche was only cosmetically damaged. The altercation capped off an otherwise impressive day of import racing. About 9,500 people attended the Import & Compact event at Moroso Motorsports Park in Palm Beach, Florida, to see 250 race cars and 145 show cars.
Attending a race at Moroso is always an experience. Sometimes it rains. But when it doesn't, you'll see a very diverse group of cars: Old-school rotaries and Toyotas, twin-turbo RX-7s, Hondas, Acuras, Diamond Stars, Supra Turbos, and even BMW M3s.
My day starts at the dragstrip. This race was sanctioned by NIRA, so the various permutations of Comp and Power are in full effect. The celeb count is actually a bit low, with Eddie and Brendon Alvarez of PSI Racing being the most famous racers in attendance. The crowd favors the old-school cars, those unloved cars from decades ago that have been brought back to life as serious drag cars. These Starlets and Datsuns seem almost cartoonish, but the times they post are certainly not. One particular group of guys in the stands chants and yells for the old-school cars as if they were attending Brazil vs. France (Viva Brasil!-TP).
The Hondas and Acuras aren't as fast as their West Coast brethren, and consequently, none of them hit the 10-second mark. A front-drive DSM car sponsored by Wrightouch manages a 11.4-second pass, and Ken Fisher's VW-powered dragster posts an 8.662-second e.t., the lowest of the day.
At some point, the track announcer starts to speak in Spanish. My Spanish consists only of what I learned from Sesame Street, so I leave the strip and walk over to the car show. As usual, the car show participants spent amazing amounts of time prepping their cars. Best Club Participation is won by JADE Motorsports, followed by East Coast Honda and Rip Speed.
To find out when the next import race is at Moroso Motorsports Park, call 561/622-1400.