23Racer

A long long time ago, maybe before some of you were born, I raced for a Factory Team in the Firestone Firehawk Series. We were provided with Suzuki Swift GTi's and hada product and financial support from NTN Bearings, Suzuki Sport and Litens Automotive. I put this story in on another website where a guy was trying to sell his Suzuki race car (for $2500 ready to go!) and I thought it was good enough to mention it here;

I remember a lot of gritted teeth and driving the wheels off a car that was about 25 to 30 hp down on the rest of the field. The rest of Touring class cars ranged up to 2.0l and 150 hp stock. Never have I driven a car so hard, for so long to finish 10th in class, LOL. I think I said memories not "good times" .

We must have been noticed as we won the Hard Charger of the year award and I finished runnerup in the Rookie of the Year Awards.

Anyways, the cars are mules as I crashed it in my first Pro race at Mosport after getting tagged going into turn 1. As usual I was flat to the floor and had nothing left to pull out of the slide so I hit the inside wall at about 60 mph and bounced back into the track facing backwards into the dust. I thought it was a bit dangerous, so I tried to fire up the car to back it off the track. The car fired and went into reverse with no issues. I backed it off the track then put it into first to drive around to the pits. The car felt okay so I ran it up through the gears with no issues and ended up finishing the race with the front of the car like a pug.

Turns out the the impact was severe enough that I blew a 6 foot wide chunk out of the wall and sprayed hunks of concrete at the spectators in the grandstand behind the wall, .

The cars are great cars and I miss "Spewie" a lot, we had some special times together. There are a ton of Suzuki Sport products available for the car that would lend themselves to an IT build and for the money, it is a monster deal. I just can't believe that somebody hasn't snapped this up by now.

Eric