I met with John Concialdi of AEM Racing to talk about the new rear-wheel-drive Honda Civic drag car that the team started to campaign this 2003 race season. There was a slight chill in the air, which was quite refreshing seeing as we're eating a hearty breakfast at a cafe overlooking the beach. During our lengthy conversation, I realized that there's a lot going on in the sport of drag racing, and this Civic is just the tip of the iceberg. We spent a few minutes touring AEM's facility where John and his team design and plan out all the aspects for the race car, while I made jokes only our staff editors would get. After John grew tired of my continuous quoting of The Simpsons, he continued to provide me with more engine knowledge than I could ever remember. I tried my best to jot down everything in my sloppy handwriting since I forgot to bring a tape recorder.
The Team Putting together a group of brilliant people and forcing them to work as one doesn't mean that you'll come through with a good team. Just look at the Clippers. They have some of the most talented players in the NBA, but they've also managed to pull such a bad record. It takes a great deal of organization to make the lions work in conjunction to form Voltron. Oddly enough, it probably takes even more effort to create a racing team. John is the team's program director and is one of the hardest-working guys in the industry. Not only does he work full-time at AEM headquarters, but he spends the remainder of his 14-hour workday building the race car's motor and coordinating the team's schedule. Jerry Mallicoat works as the crew chief, and for good reason. His 35 years of drag racing experience provides the team with vital information for the clutch and suspension setups. Although many parts are machined externally, many of the designs come from Mark Cheyne, the crew technician. Stuck behind the wheel again is Mr. Clean himself, Stephan Papadakis. Even with so much sponsor backing the past couple of years, running the race team took a big toll on Steph. In fact, this new car was his idea. It seemed like a better plan to have a bigger team involved, and AEM could provide what he needed. So what can we expect from their team? John tells us that since they're such a new team and they've never worked together before, it's a really big challenge in terms of discipline. "We even view our sponsors as technical partners because we help each other out with development and R&D for products," John clarifies.
Like any team out there, they met with a few detours along their quest to victory, a major one being the leaking of a failed fuel injector O-ring that caused an engine fire. What made this mishap worse was that happened only three days before the car was to make its debut at the NHRA season opener in Las Vegas, Nevada. The team scrambled together, working night and day to get the car back together only to get dealt another bad hand. After only one test pass, the event was called and postponed due to bad weather conditions. But that didn't stop them from heading straight to Phoenix to hit up the IDRC race where they made very low 8-second passes. However, poor track prep made it difficult for many of the big powerhouses to maintain traction. "It was like a battle of who could get traction, not who was faster," John informs us. Many racers had to detune their cars just to make it down the track straight. That's not just a performance issue, but a safety one as well.