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Story by Jack Baruth - Photography by the endlessly patient Michelle Baruth

It’s been said that NASCAR’s single-car qualifying is perhaps the most stressful few minutes in motorsport. You’re all alone out there, the sole focus of every track official, every competing team and driver, the thousands of fans in the stands, all the cameras - it’s murder. And yet until this very moment, as I dive into the first turn at Michigan’s Flat Rock Speedway in a tired old Ford Tempo, all by myself on the track, the only show in town, I hadn’t really understood what it might be like. The little quarter-mile bullring is lined with seasoned old oval veterans, leaning casually against the track’s catch-fencing, making the most economical hand gestures possible while speaking in a manner which combines vicious twang and brutal understatements, (e.g. “You mess up like that again and you’re like to hit the wall and crack up a bit”) all idly Staring. Directly. At. Me. They are staring at me and my little Tempo, chugging around the track, and I don’t think any of them are inwardly characterizing me as “the next Kasey Kahne”.

Plus the right rear tire is rubbing itself to violent death against the fender, and I think the car’s leaking gasoline again. I reflect for a moment about the solid two and a half minutes it took me to get into this car, and I wonder about how long those minutes will seem if this sucker catches aflame, and how the locals will laconically characterize my fiery demise. “He was fixin’ to burn up there.”

“Yup. Sure was.”

“And then he did burn right up. Didn’t even bother to get outta the car. Wonder why that was.”

“Yup.”

How’d I get into this situation? Who’s stupid enough to rent a race car when the rental fee is a measly fifty bucks?

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Story by Jack Baruth - Race Photography by Dave Everest

Rain. Today’s race day was defined by the rain - starting miserably and getting steadily worse. The previous day’s race had shown the occasional bit of dry pavement to my co-driver, Brian M., but for my race it’s forty-two degrees outside and almost Katrina-esque in the fury of the storm above. In the 8am practice, I spin the Green Baron Motorsports #187 PTE Neon and run off track at the bottom of the Esses, but have no problem getting back on. Not everybody else is as lucky; the wrecked cars are coming in two and three at a time. Trailers are fleeing Mid-O like the proverbial rats from the proverbial sinking ship. Race Group A, over seventy cars strong yesterday, fields thirty-three entries today…

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Story by Jack Baruth - Workshop Photos by Jack Baruth - Race Photography by Dave Everest

That Mazda television ad is lying to you. You know, the one where they say… “There’s an old saying in racing. To build a great race car, start with a great street car” or something like that. What a crock. To build a great race car, everybody knows that you start with a Porsche LMP2, which is not a street car, not even in Dubai.

The saying is really this: “To build a cheap race car, start with one that’s already been rolled.” And without further ado, we present our new team - Green Baron Motorsports - and our new race car for the 2008 season - a 1994-build original Neon ACR. Sold as a Showroom Stock race car fourteen years ago, it’s been rolled, crashed, possibly set on fire, you name it - but it’s still one of those original race-only ACRs, and that means it’s, like, totally the Hemi ‘Cuda of 1994. So we invested a new Corolla’s worth of cash and hundreds of man-hours to bring it back on track, including a miserable four-day no-sleep final crunch to make sure it passed its first NASA tech inspection. It passed, it got a logbook, and today, in the hands of old pro Brian M., it took its first NASA podium in its first race.

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