We’ve been lucky to share a bit of the Trans Am series with our readers here in The Garage through our long time friend Blaise Csida, who runs Gateway Racing at Mosport when he’s not racing in the series. I received a note earlier this week from Jon Brett of Time Warp Racing, telling me that he would be entering the Mosport round of the 2011 Trans Am series.
TWR press release
Plans are being made by Time Warp Racing to field a Derhaag bodied C5 Corvette in the upcoming Mosport Trans-Am event on the May long weekend.
The car is currently at Gateway Racing where it is being prepared by Trans-Am competitor Blaise Csida and staff.
Jonathan Brett who owns and drives the car does not expect to be competitive, but says “yeah we are probably a field filler but we are dipping a toe into the water, and who knows where it could go from there” he said.
The original chassis was created in 1977, by Mo Carter and ran succesfully as an IMSA GTX car. It also saw action in Trans-Am in the hands of Jerry Simmons during the 80’s and 90’s. It has held short track records at the Glen and won the South Atlantic Road Racing Championship. Over the years many upgrades have been done, but it is still old school compared to the modern designs.
Jonathan has raced with VARAC, CASC and SVRA for a decade and is ready to try something new and hopes to support the growth in Trans-Am.
I’ve seen the car and was a little bit surprised to hear that the chassis is as old as it is, so I decided to do a bit of digging. This car has some serious Canadian racing history!
Robert Barg, another Canadian who raced T/A back in the glory days says:
According to IMSA info on the net this was actually an early De Kon Monza (Horst Kwech & Lee Dykstra) that was crashed and sold to Mo Carter.
I had always assumed that Brad Francis built this car for Mo, but maybe it was just restored by Brad and that wild camaro bodywork was put on the car? As I remember the engine that was used and raced by Mo was a big block Chev with 2 inline 4 bl. carbs. Roy Bean, who helped look after the ex Mo Carter 67 camaro that I raced for Al Richards, also ended up working with Brad on that Carter car. Last time I saw it racing was at the 1980 Sebring 12 hr – co-driver with Mo was Craig Carter (no relation). It was later sold and raced in the T/A series with different Corvette bodywork I understand and has found it’s way to the Toronto area some time ago. I understand Roy has been working for Leo Romano and built a truck racer for him that runs at Mosport. It would be nice to see it back on the track as raced by Mo, but you can update a chassis from those years and they are still fast. The current closed wheel track record holder at Mission is a late seventies era T/A Corvette that has been updated and driven by Dave Kunicki.
It is going to be very cool to see local car, with 3 decades worth of racing history under a modern skin, in action with the big boys in a couple of months. We’ll keep our readers up to date with news and images as the race weekend comes closer!
Current photos courtesy of Malcom Haylock. Vintage photo of Mo Carter Camaro from Gene Felton Restorations.
Editor’s note: Oops, the vintage photo appears to be the 1970 Camaro That Mo Carter raced earlier. The correct car is pictured below, in a shot by Jerry Winker.
