Quote:
Originally posted by SSB
And now, weighing in from Miami, Florida, is Lance.
"My best story other then the one you or Cortez remembers about a time I came through and some Idiot was walking across by Beaumont and dove into the bushes to not get hit. Then there was the time I was up there with 2 friends from Manhattan Beach, I was in my Mom's RX-2, Barry was driving his mom's RX-4 and my buddy Jim was in His RX-4....at Carls or Carls Jr...Jim went over the edge understeering off the turn behind Barry and I as we were heading towards deadmans, we thought he was dead.....We turned around came back and there was Jim crawling up the side.....he had the brakes on and the car slowed down enough that it just went over the edge and the brush stopped it just out if sight...so Barry parks his Moms car right above it on the shoulder...Jim sat on the hood to wait for us as we went down to Ventura Blvd to get a tow truck....as we came back up we saw all sorts of emergency lights flashing off the hillside as we got near......we figured the cops came upon Jim and were busting him for something.....we get in sight of the scene and there are Cops, ambulances, Fire rescue etc.....it seems as Jim was sitting there on the Hood of Barry's moms car waiting....some kid with his girlfriend came into the turn just as Jim had, started to understeer right at Jim sitting on the hood, Jim sensing imminent danger leapt off the hood over the side where his car sat and the kid plowed head on into Barry's mom's car and totaled both cars and hurt he and his girlfriend....not too terribly bad as I remember...so they tow away the wrecks, pull Jim's car back.....not a scratch on it.......and poor Barry had to go home to his Mom and try to explain how her car got totaled on Mulholland swearing he was not driving it much less racing....
I think I found about Mullholland from the Mag articles first, I started going up there very tentatively, it took a couple of trips from Manhattan beach to figure out where everybody hung out and what was going on.
I was always treated well, even when no one knew me, you guys were a tight group but people were friendly and cool.
I came in pretty late....the last 2 or so years of your Era....but all the guys I met up there I can still call friends today, and a few my best friends like you and Ron....
Then I got my Job at Vilem B Haan ......and during the several years I worked there i got to know the "Beverly Hills" kids that started going up after the "CRE" Era...and that is when I met Mark Mitchell, another good friend to this day....."
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I was standing on the berm at Bowmont when that guy decided it was a good idea to cross the road in front of Lance.He was on a flyer in his Cosworth Vega w/b in the sweeper and this cat does the squirrel move.. I can still remember seeing the guys adidas horizontally in the headlights as he went for the leap..Deers are smarter!
About ten years after that Lance,who at the time was the uberdog on the American Honda SSB team,got me in on the gong show tryouts for the squad in the old Escort series(Gary Guldstrand,son of Dick who had raced on the Mul years earlier was a crew chief on that team,six degree hello..))and we won the 24 at Mid Ohio that year against a superior VW GTI factory team. If you're keeping box scores Lance won several SS championships including a GTU title so there's another graduate of "Formula Mulholland" that achieved success at the pro level.Looking back at the amount of caliber shoes that cut their teeth up there it becomes apparent why it was such a truly unique learning eXperience.There wasn't the luxury of a nice fat apron and groomed kitty litter runoff- the margin for error was nonexistent,and it was brutally obvious what the consequences were if you exceed the rules.Doors 1-3 offered head on,embankment,or over the falls-all in cars that you had to romance around because they didn't stop or turn like a proper race car.Those kinds of relatively heavy,low grip dynamics coupled with that enviroment made for amazingly fast sheetbox drivers later on when (most) everyone else was travelling the same direction.If you could carry momentum up there(especially in the wet,or fog,and lights out on fullmoon nights) most real tracks were a walk in the park to figure out,especially new temporary street courses.Those scare the crap out of some drivers but not if one came from the land of the razors edge!Lots of guys laps are slower at night during the long races- most mul grads can turn qualifying laps all night long, go figure
MM