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Archives for March 2006

A tragedy in the telling

March 31, 2006 by Gary Grant 1 Comment

Having been around motorsports of one sort or another my whole life, I have unfortunately been touched by the deaths of a couple of drivers that I’ve competed against. Having been a driver, I suspect that the death of another driver tends to affect me more deeply than those who haven’t raced. Because of this I typically don’t feel the need to broadcast my feelings, there are enough people who want to do that. I wasn’t going to write about Paul Dana’s death, as I think enough has been said already. Then on Tuesday, I read an article in the Toronto Sun by Dean McNulty titled “Dana had no place on an IRL track” and it made me so angry that I had to comment.

The author goes to great lengths to explain how inexperienced Dana was and how tragic it was that he was allowed to race cars at this level. From what I can see Mr. McNulty, supposedly a motorsports writer, has no concept of the route an open wheel racer takes to get to the top levels of the sport. Like any pro sport, motor racing has a ladder of sorts that most athletes climb on their way to the top level. Most racers start in karts, or a lower powered formula car like a Formula Ford or Vee, then progress to any number of higher formulas as talent and funding allow. McNulty asserts that Dana had reached the Infiniti Pro Series “a minor league stepping stone and did reasonably well, winning two races and a couple of poles”. What McNulty fails to mention is that the IPS is the last rung on the ladder before progressing to the IRL and that Dana had two full seasons, including finishing 2nd overall in the series. One of his wins came on the Milwaukee Mile, one of the fastest super speedways & he had the pole at the Homestead track that claimed his life. Clearly, Dana was a talented driver, with exactly the background needed to make the step onto the top wrung of the ladder. Mr. McNulty even goes so far as to compare Dana’s experience to that of “rookie sensation”Danica Patrick. Firstly, how is his ten years of race experience any less credible than her ten years of experience? I’ll go out on a big limb here & say that the only reason Miss Patrick is a sensation is that she is a she. Danica Has never won a race at a pro level, she is essentially a fast also ran, Dana was the real deal. Sure, he was able to put together the sweet sponsorship deal, but he also had the goods to deliver the results once he sat in the car.

“If open wheel racing doesn’t change the way it does business, the blood will be on it’s hands”

I’m not normally one to criticize someone elses views in public, I firmly believe in freedom of speech and all that stuff, but this article goes beyond a public opinion. This smacks of witch hunt. For years, media and politicians and at times even the vatican have tried to shut down motor racing due to it’s barbaric nature. The racing community is more aware of safety now than ever and millions of dollars are spent every year researching ways to make racing safer. Even with modern safety equipment, proper driver education and trackside medical support, the reality is that racing is a dangerous sport. It is a obviously a tragedy when a driver dies, and of course the racing community needs to examine each incident to gain knowledge that may prevent similar incidents in the future.

Driver error does occur. Let’s face it, driver’s are human and sometimes they make mistakes and those mistakes can have grave consequences, but we don’t need some journalist sensationalizing those mistakes in an effort to make themselves look like some sort of prophet. If all the reports are correct, it sounds like Paul Dana may have made a mistake. Perhaps he was blinded by the sun, as the photos show some major shadows on the track from trees outside the track. We will never know. Just don’t let the media turn this into a modern cry to banish motor racing again. Paul Dana would want the racing world to go on competing.

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Welcome to The Garage version 2.0

March 27, 2006 by Gary Grant 1 Comment

Some of you may have noticed that things have been a bit quiet in The Garage over the last week. That’s because I’ve been working behind the scenes with Jaime from random getting version 2.0 ready to launch, and here it is.

So far, I love the new format, as it gives me, the technically inept, much more control over little things. With Blogger, I basically had to stay within the lines of the template. Here, the lines I have to paint within are much broader.

Please take some time to look around. All the posts still have pictures, but they are in the actual post.The pictures are bigger & clearer than they were in Blogger. I hope everyone likes our new home.

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Only a couple more days!

March 24, 2006 by Gary Grant Leave a Comment

www.thegarageblog.comWill be LIVE in a couple more days!

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Love those vintage racers!

March 24, 2006 by Gary Grant Leave a Comment

I’m assuming this is a Carrera Panamerica vintage racer, but I just love old Mercedes road racers! I look forward to visiting Cars & Photos for stuff like this.

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Volvo buys stake in Nissan

March 23, 2006 by Gary Grant Leave a Comment

A couple of weeks ago, I was speaking with some other local Nissan types about an article I had read online that said that Nissan was looking to get into the cargo van market, based on the Titan pick up. Now, Autoblog has reported that Volvo has purchased a portion of Nissan Diesel that sells diesel trucks in Asia, with an option to buy more later.
For years, business consumers have had to put up with poorly designed boxes that have terrible seating, because that’s all that has been offered by the Big 3. Lately of course, the Dodge Sprinter has offered a bit of euro flavour as an alternative, but at a serious price premium. If this Nissan & Volvo combo actually comes to North American, at a competitive price, they might actually kick some serious butt in the cargo van market.

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The Friday Fuckwit

March 22, 2006 by Gary Grant Leave a Comment


Ok, so I don’t drop the F bomb very often in The Garage (well, at least the online version) but this post title from Dadcentric made me pee myself! I have a new word to use tomorrow. You have to love british lingo. Oh yeah…and the moron riding the bike is pretty impressive too.Fuckwit indeed!

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Audi TT or tank?

March 21, 2006 by Gary Grant 1 Comment

Watch this ABC video story about a US Audi dealer who lived through a horrific crash in his Audi TT. I bet he’ll sell a ton of these after the public gets ahold of this. He should post photos of the wreckage in his showroom! A very lucky man indeed.

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Don’t drink & drive

March 21, 2006 by Gary Grant Leave a Comment


I just came across the newest release by Atom Films. It’s a triple X, Pinks spoof featuring three knobs, including a Fabio wannabe named Triple Deezle, who are racing for Pinks. This is funny, just don’t make the mistake I did of inviting the kids in to watch. Now I have try figure out a way to stop the 7 year old from dropping the F bomb every 3 minutes before Mom comes home!

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2006 Stars Season Opener in the books

March 19, 2006 by Petri 1 Comment

Well, the first race of the season for me is in the books. In some ways, actually a lot of ways, I’m glad it is. It rained the entire weekend and our teams luck was somewhere in Kansas. If anyone finds it please forward it to the next race! There were some exciting races, however, for the J3 Competition race team the weekend couldn’t come to a close any faster. The team could only muster a few top 15’s and when your used to winning – mediocrity is not acceptable. The event with all the rain still stayed on schedule, and I have to give them credit for a job well done.
Some notables, Canadian Eric Gerrits finished on the podium with a third place place in the Spec racer class and Britain’s Alexander Simms was a treat to watch in the rain. Next on the docket will be Arizona, should be dry I hope. Anyone who wants to see top notch racing should make a point of trying to come out and watch one of these events – it is quite a show.

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Site review: VAST

March 19, 2006 by Gary Grant Leave a Comment

What is VAST? It is a brand new free search service that extracts classified ads from across the web and displays them in an easy to manage format. So, what does this mean for readers of The Garage? Well, their current tagline is “tracking over 4.8 million cars for sale across 13554 sites”. That is a lot of cars for sale. I did a pretty generic search “race car” and it brought back over 15,000 cars for sale. Of course the bulk of them were British Racing Green, but it’s still relevant. I entered “sprite” as a keyword and got 218 listings, many of those were sprites or midgets.

I thought this was worth sharing, and we make integrate it into the next version of The Garage, which is going to launch soon.

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