The first ever Spectre 341 Challenge is in the books and the results surpassed anyone’s expectations. More than 24 cars ranging from exotics to muscle cars to a 1952 DeSoto made many trips up the mountain in Virginia City, Nevada. Spectre Performance president Amir Rosenbaum send along a great race recap story and a load of photos we have in a gallery for your viewing pleasure. This is an event that has been added to our bucket list. Epic doesn’t even start to describe it.
Click here to see a photo gallery of all the cars in competition
Spectre president Amir Rosenbaum penned the following race recap story. It sums up the event better than we ever could.
Mark
Gillies, Car & Driver Executive Editor and accomplished race car driver
extraordinare looked me in the eye and murmured something to the effect of;
“You know, they lose at least one a week at the Nürburgring……
”
No,
I didn’t know that.
Was
that supposed to be comforting?
It
was 4:45 pm. Our First Spectre 341 Challenge had just finished
and the last 2 cars were up on the course. The paramedics and fire truck crews
stationed at the top and bottom of the hill had packed up their stuff and were
ready to pull out and go home when the call came in on the radio
“……… car over the side……… “
Shit!
The
Spectre 341 Challenge is a very unique happening in that it is
very real. It is all about reality. And I’m not talking about reality TV, which
is anything but real. Reality consists of intangibles. The human
condition consists of intangibles. We are all irrational illogical creatures
trying to act rational and logical. But we can’t. We live in a super high tech
world where we try to break everything down into precisely defined measurements
using micro-metrics and nano-bytes. And while we are able to measure just about
everything, the most important stuff, the intangible stuff, can’t be
contained within any sort of metric.
We
can’t even describe it.
Intangible:
adj. – impalpable, untouchable, incorporeal, abstract, elusive, indefinable,
ethereal, ghostly, spectral.
The
Spectre 341 Challenge is a 5.2 mile mountain road with 22
[ or so ] turns and is most emphatically not a race track. It wasn’t designed
by a race track designer, it was built to conform organically to the side of a
mountain so that ore carts, and later, trucks, could bring their deposits to a
place where they could be processed.
It
is as real a road as you will ever encounter anywhere, other than probably the
Nürburgring. None of the turns are the same. The camber of the roadway changes
radically, for no rhyme or reason. From afar, some of the straight sections
of roadway look like a long piece of orange Hot Wheels track, twisting
back and forth. Never straight or flat. A “correct” line here means
avoiding the snow markers, which are sometimes positioned right where you would
want to apex a corner. And sometimes not. And they get replaced every few years
with new ones that crop up in different spots.
There
are very few guardrails. None where you think they should be. There are no
run-off areas, no tire walls, no hay bales, no berms, no nothing. The drop offs
are everywhere and they are unforgiving.
It
certainly wasn’t an easy event to put on. On our first day, just as we were
scheduled to start running it started to rain. That’s right, in the Nevada
desert. In June! Are you kidding me? This cannot be happening. Rain? Really?
Or, I guess, reality.
And
then it stops raining, and we are about to flag our first car on the course
when the paramedic van and fire truck pull out, sirens blaring and lights
flashing. WTF? Turns out that if there is a highway emergency nearby, and they
are the closest, they get the call. And of course reality dictates that a
highway emergency will occur just when you are about to start. But we paid for
them to be here! For us! Doesn’t matter, someone needs them more than we do,
and so off they go. And we don’t go. Man, this reality is starting to suck.
After
only 20 minutes or so the fire truck and paramedic van returned and we finally
got going. By Saturday afternoon we had logged 204 runs. That is truly amazing
and a testament to all the time, hard work and professionalism invested by our
crew at Spectre Performance and the terrific organizers we hired; Jimi Day and
Wally Olczac of FM3 Marketing.
In
2002, after 13 years of running the hill, I set an all time record of 3:10 in
my not so highly modified Ferrari F40. Everyone thought it was highly modified.
OK, we ran a cheater hose from the waste gates to fool them into thinking the
car was at sea level, which increased the boost a little. That’s about it. The
secret to running so fast? It’s all in the intangibles……..
So
everyone is asking me what I think about the possibility of my record getting
broken. And I respond with a pat answer, something like “yeah, well,
you know, records are meant to be broken……..”
What
a crock.
The
truth is I had already started to put my F40 back together after running it on
the Bonneville Salt Flats at over 220 MPH. I’ll be ready and running at the
Second Annual Spectre 341 Challenge in 2011. You can count on
it!
Records
are be made to be broken my ass.
But
this year, for the Inaugural Spectre 341 Challenge, we had
a bunch of phenomenal drivers, awesome cars and some very very fast
times. Here they are, from the top of the hill:
Mark
Gillies, from Car & Driver magazine showed up in a 2010 Viper ACR. It is a
“borrowed” car, on loan from Chrysler/Dodge/Fiat whatever they are
called now.
I
wonder, what did he tell them he was going to do with this car? A road test?
Check the mileage? Well, yeah, this would be a test all right. The car shows up
with 80 tread-wear tires, and for this, our first inaugural event, we had
spec’d a 100 tread-wear minimum. We decide to let him run in an exhibition
class, and what an exhibition it was! A 3:19. First time ever on this hill.
What does this mean? It means that Mark Gillies is a very, very competent race and
street car driver, possessing intangible skills that cannot be honed on race
tracks. This is a street racer’s street racer. Mark got 14 runs in, as well as
the two fastest times. Until you come here and drive the course, you can’t
really imagine how fast a 3:19 is for a first time driver. Or for any driver.
Hopefully Mark will be back next year, with boost. If he does, he’ll be way
faster. This guy is really good. The real deal. And, Mark gets inducted
into the Spectre 3:41 Club, of course.
The
official First Place, with a time of 3:21 goes to Lou Gigliotti in his super
bad 2010 Corvette ZR1, bristling with all sorts of LG Motorsports parts and
exhausting what smelled an awful lot like what you smell at the airport when
jets take off. Lou got to run a total of 13 times, another first timer at the
hill, but with a pair of 3:21’s and a pair of 3:22’s, he got it going on in a
big way. No small thanks to hill veteran and ultra fast driver himself, Guy
Cunningham, who would have competed more this year, except he and his lovely
wife Soraja handled all of our catering. Guy gave Lou a ride in the Griggs
Racing GR40 Mustang, and Lou, consummate professional and quick study that he
is, promptly knocked 6 seconds off of his times, and cinched 1st place and
membership into the Spectre 3:41 Club.
Second
place for 2010, with a time of 3:22, goes to Steve Millen. Yes, that
Steve Millen, of IMSA, LeMans and Pikes Peak fame and owner of the super parts
company Stillen. Steve brought a race prepped looking Nissan GT-R, a crew, and
enough pre-event smack talk to embarrass a politician leading in the polls,
boasting on his website that not only were they going to beat the record, they
were possibly going to go under 3 minutes. Then reality struck. It looks like
the Kiwi gets to eat crow, right? No, not so fast [ hah, pun! ]. See,
Steve and crew had to rush the car to the event, and also worry about having to
prep it and stick it on a boat on the Tuesday morning after for an event in
Steve’s homeland, New Zealand, which meant that the car showed up on its stock
Bridgestone run flat tires that weigh probably 65 lbs. each and have the
frictional grip of olive oil on a Teflon pan. Steve only took 9 runs, declaring
the course “greasy” and stopping early.
If
you don’t understand the value of tires, then you can’t possibly understand the
heroics pulled off by Steve in
running a 3:22. This is not the proverbial knife at a gunfight. This is
bringing a note from your Mum to the gunfight. Steve says he’ll be back next
year, with a second car for son Kyle too, and tires that do more than just hold
air. I can’t wait. Steve gets a Spectre 3:41 Club membership as well.
Third
place is probably the most impressive to me; local boy Jeremy Kappus in a
Mitsubishi Lancer Evo RS, with some modifications, sure, but at the end of the
day it’s still a 4 cylinder car up against these monster-engined machines.
Jeremy ran a 3:25.5 on Saturday afternoon. He had already run a 3:25.8 on
Friday. In fact, on Friday, at the end of the day, he had the fastest time of
anyone. Most of his 14 runs were in the 3:27/3:26 range, so he is not only very
fast, he is also very consistent. And like I already said, just
outstanding! It is an honor to present Jeremy with membership into the Spectre
3:41 Club.
Next
up: Guy Cunningham, a veteran of the hill, who ran 3:28 in the Grigg’s Racing
2007 GR40 Mustang. I am sure that were it not due to his catering commitment,
for which we are all grateful, Guy would have run even faster yet. And even
though Guy was already a 3:41 Club member since 1999, he did improve his time
by 1 second.
Ezra
Dyer, one of the funniest car journalists I know, showed up in another
“loaner” car, a bone stock 2010 Porsche Turbo. With only 9 runs, due
to having to leave early to catch a plane, Ezra beat the living daylights out
of this showroom fresh [ not anymore ] car with a best time of 3:33 and
membership into the Spectre 3:41 Club. That’s at an average speed of almost 88
MPH. That’s average. Many of the corners are marked at 25 MPH, so even if you
triple that, it’s honking fast.
Our
last 2010 entry into the 3:41 Club goes posthumously to Alexander Djordjevic
with a time of 3:36, run on Friday, in a
highly modified Porsche 996 Twin Turbo. In order to respect the families’
wishes, I will only say that this was a tragic and unfortunate incident that is
all too real. Our heartfelt thoughts and prayers go out to his friends and
family.
Besides
the 3:41 Club inductees, there were several other drivers of note that helped
make this event so special: J.P. Rademacher, in a Subaru WRX STi had the most
number of runs with 20! I believe he had to go get gas twice in order to
accomplish this feat.
Another
local boy, Adam Auerbach brought out what is probably the most intensely
engineered GMC Syclone on the planet. You have to see the pictures to believe
it. Truly an epic exercise in performance engineering.
Gaetano
Cosentino brought out a beautiful ’69 Camaro and Jeff Smith brought his ageless
’65 Chevelle and both guys ran under 4:00 minutes, with 3:59 times, which is
incredible when you think that this is their first time on the hill, driving
cars that are over 40 years old! Seriously, is there any worry about metal
fatigue? Lack of technology? Who needs technology? Check out the photos as
these are some of the best looking cars on the hill for sure, and they are very
fast too.
But
those cars are spring chickens compared to Dean Smith’s 1952 DeSoto. Hey, that
car is 58 years old! And he ran at an average speed of almost 70 MPH.
Jody
Takagi drove 15 hours straight from Seattle in her Boxster, after being
nominated by her Forum group (6-speed Online), and then did them proud by
running a very respectable 4:22 with an average speed of 71 MPH. This is an
excellent result for a first timer at the hill, who brought her mom for moral
support. Jody livened up the weekend with her enthusiasm and infectious smile.
We want her back for sure! And mom too.
One
other mention I need to highlight is Paul Feeny, who couldn’t bring the car he
wanted to bring, so instead he bought a Miata on eBay for $202.50 and brought
that, and ran a 4:14 at almost 74 MPH, and for sure got the best bang for the
buck of anyone. That’s real too.
We
will be announcing the dates and rules for the 2011 Second Annual Spectre 341
Challenge very soon. We’re planning for a bigger and better event next year
where once again, we try to define the intangibles of what is the fastest
street car on a real road, ever. In the mean time, keep it real.
