Today's motorsports fans have proven that their interests extend beyond crashes and hours of left-hand turns. Road racing is easily one of the most exciting forms of motorsports around, save bar stool racing (those guys have mad skills!). And if you're looking for exciting, real-world, tightly-contested road racing it doesn't get any better than the Grand Am Cup, a series within a series (sidebar alert!) with fields as large as eighty to ninety cars. Races are usually two and a half hours long, with some as long as 12 hours. During a race there are additional elements such as driver and tire changes and high speed refueling through a system known as a dry break. With 80-plus cars on the track at once and pit stops and driver changes, the GAC makes for two and a half hours of action that even Bruckheimer would be hard-pressed to top.
We were fortunate enough to spend a race weekend with i-MOTO Racing. i-MOTO Racing is a GAC Team running in the Street Tuner (ST) class. We caught up with the i-MOTO crew for the fourth round of the 2006 Championship at Laguna Seca Raceway, a beautiful track set in the middle of Monterey, California and home to the legendary Corkscrew. We rolled up, camera in hand, only to be greeted by handshakes and warm smiles. The i-MOTO crew was so welcoming that it wasn't long until we decided to pick up a wrench and help prep the cars for the weekend. The vehicles consisted of two beautifully prepared Acura TSXs. These two matched yellow sport sedans were piloted by the well-known Roger Foo (aka Hong Kong Fooey), team owner Glenn Bocchino, former Spec Miata hot shot Tom Long, and American Honda Engineer (as well as Type R Guru and Super Street hero) Lee Niffenegger.
The TSX is a fairly new vehicle to the GAC and is still very early in its development. The i-MOTO Racing crew knew it was a quick car but they were unsure of how it would stand up against the likes of other world-class manufacturers during a grueling GAC race. The RSXs had already proven themselves very capable along with the Cobalts, 3-Series, and RX-8s. We turned out to be quick in qualifying too, with Glenn setting the car nice and high in the top fifteen of a twenty-nine car field. But qualifying well at a Grand Am event is only a small portion of the battle for the weekend. We knew we had done well but our work was not through. We stayed late in the paddock after qualifying to make sure the cars were flawlessly prepared.
It is these cars that are the best part about GAC. Grand Am cars are based on factory unibodies; you will not find relocated suspension pickup points, sequential gearboxes, built to the hilt engines and other outlandish modifications that shoot the cost through the roof and remove a car from its showroom counterpart. While Grand Am may be beyond the budget of an average person, it is very much an affordable form of professional motorsports complete with great TV coverage.
It ain't quite F1 but these guys can change drivers and tires and refuel quicker than it takes us to adjust our seat backs and Broadway mirrors.