[Fot] Good Racing

[Bill Babcock]

Hmm--I blabbed too much--it bounced. Two pieces:

Tony's a hell of a good driver, but I'm not taking responsibility for his
attitude.

I don't consider myself a good racer. I think I used to be an okay motorcycle
racer, but my reflexes are nothing like they used to be. I have to drive cars
within the boundaries of my current capabilities and I think I do that OK. I
can tell you what I did.

I raced motorcycles from age 17 (1965) until I was about 30. 1/2 mile, TT, and
mile when I was a kid, added motocross and a little roadracing when I got
older.

I started driving cars about 25 years ago with a Rabbit in SCCA and ICSSC
races. The car was the previous year's Northwest champ, and it had just been
bought by my boss at the software company I worked for--who promptly broke it.
He wanted to race but had the mechanical sympathy of a goat. I wrenched in
return for using the car out of class. Did that for a few years and got the
bug.

I went from that to vintage. Did a Bondurant school, and then did a bunch of
ICSSC and SCCA schools just for the teaching and track time--already had the
license.   Raced my TR3 until someone decided to take a serious look at it
(not much was legal) and bought Peyote in 1999. I felt I wasn't getting enough
track time to progress, so I bought a Radical DSR car and raced it in SCCA and
ICSSC. Pretty much raced every weekend of the race season for a few years,
switching back and forth between Peyote and the Radical.

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