2005 Rolex 24 From Afar
Ordinary People, Ordinary Cars, Ordinary…
© Tom Kjos
Tom Kjos used to visit the Rolex 24 every year, but for the last few years, he and a gathering of friends have watched the race on TV and the internet. This is his story of the Rolex 24.

Burnsville, Minnesota, USA – The Second Annual Trek to Tropical Neenah became a tale of cars. Ostensibly, the reason for this trip was the 2005 Rolex 24, but like a lot of racing, and most especially sports car racing, it is often questionable whether among friends it’s really about the racing at all. Road courses (even rovals) lend themselves to get-togethers, and they did for those of this year’s group of friends, who were part of over a dozen annual trips to Florida beginning in the mid 1980s.

Last year, this story featured the inhabitants of “The Commercial Break”, and travels in a truck – a Porsche Cayenne, since replaced. This year it’s mostly a tale of cars. In a way it always has been. Before it moved to Neenah, Kelly’s suburban garage was known as “Wexwerks” – the place where twenty years ago we fired strut springs, rebuilt a BMW “Big Six”, consumed prodigious amounts of malt beverage, and solved all the world’s problems. Almost without our notice that faded away, just as did the trips to Daytona, casualties of advancing age, changing lifestyles, and other interests and obligations – including children, writing, and computers.

This time our little group expanded from last year’s small band of me, Jim Schwartz and the Cayenne; adding Jeannie, Bobbi and the other Jim (with the beer, my brother in law), and Steve.

We left Minneapolis on Friday, just a bit ahead of the rush hour traffic, Jim and Steve out first. Steve, of Chinese extraction, likes to answer to “Fast Fong”. Steve is a high tech throwback to the days of the “…Super Stock Dodge…and…the terror of Colorado Boulevard…” (with thanks to the Beach Boys). Fast Fong has instructed at Brainerd International, but the signature item is undoubtedly the Porsche 944 turbo with the modified rear end ratios, the oversized turbocharger – god knows what else, and we won’t get into what hides under the skin of his Audi S4.

But it wasn’t Steve – a car guy who gets car sick and lost – who drove the first car headed east. It was Jim, our Cayenne pilot. The Cayenne is history, though, and therein lays an important part of this tale. It was “out the door” since last year, as were the Boxster and Mini Cooper. It could have been the Fortieth Anniversary Porsche 911, acquired since, or even the AMG Merc, but it was the “winter beater”, an “arrest me red” 1999 Mustang Cobra, with traction control and the best winter tires available. The Cobra, we think, was car number 48, and the 911 number 49. The magic fifty can’t be far behind – in the spring a young man’s fancy turns to cars, right?

Jeannie and I got off next in “Prancer”. (Jeannie likes to name cars; there was Zeus, for instance, a 1987 Hyundai, so you get the idea.) Anyway, “Prancer”, a 2003 BMW 325Xi (the newest car I’ve bought in decades) replaced “The Blue Beast” (an Audi Quattro V8). Leaving later were my sister Bobbi and her husband Jim, another member of the old Daytona gang. On their way back to take possession of a new home in Las Vegas, they were able to do us the favor of a one-way transport of “The Barbi Car”. That’s the purple plastic 1993 Saturn in which my daughter Heather ran around Malibu and Hollywood and between sets and stage during her “Hollywood Years”. Those weren’t the easiest 175,000 miles of course, but the five-speed coupe will find a home in Neenah, as a first car for Heather’s cousin Brittany.

The way over was largely uneventful. Jeannie and I got caught in a traffic tie-up as a result of an 18-wheeler wreck on Interstate 94. We called back to Bobbi and Jim, and they took a detour around. Steve and Jim had gone through before the incident. The cell phone rang later with a message from the latter.

“Were you planning on stopping at Loopy’s?”

“I don’t think so,” we answered.

Loopy’s is a road house with “character” near Chippewa Falls.

“Well, if you do, don’t bother playing the poker machine at the back,” said Schwartz, “I just cleaned that one out.” (doing so, above)

Did you ever know anyone who always wins?

After four-plus hours, we rolled into Appleton’s “Outback Steakhouse” within thirty minutes of each other.

Saturday morning came with an overwhelming urge to start it all at “The Break” on Commercial Avenue (the proper name, it seems). These are simply the best Bloody Marys on the planet – your choice of beer for the chaser.

(Tom's sister and Jim Schwartz, left)

We were back at “Wexwerks” in time to get properly set-up, meaning tuned-in to Speed, supplied with drinks and snacks, and logged on to dailysportscar.

We figured out the mystery of the “extra” formation laps for Malcolm; there is no “pre-race” coverage, so those are used to tell us where this is all coming from.

As to what it is, that is a little more difficult. Based on what the announcers tell us, it is a race that takes 24 hours, mostly in cars we’ve never heard of, but contested by drivers from IRL, the former CART and NASCAR, with some other guys to fill in for them in between. There are some Porsches and stuff out there with them, too – they seem to be there mostly to get in the way of the cars we’ve never heard of. Based on that, we watch for those famous drivers, but there are none there in the first couple of hours; it seems that they have decided to let their “fill-ins” start for them. We guess they’ll “show their stuff” after that.

It doesn’t take too long for our small group to break down further – into a conversation in the kitchen about the new house in Las Vegas, about the new Porsche, the Porsche in Wexwerk’s garage, the Porsches raced by Bobbi and Jim in club events, and the Porsche with the oversized turbo back in Minneapolis. This is a 24 hour race after all, you can’t watch all of it. There is some napping on the couch, then a trip to pick up ribs and such for dinner (with a side trip to “The Break”). We talk about prototypes – these and others. We decide that we know lots of guys with faster cars than these – like Marcus, Kelly’s dentist, who had a 600 horsepower 911 turbo built to take to club events – and almost killed himself. We conclude that these Daytona “whats-its” were built for guys like Marcus, so they could play more safely. After a bit more thought, we decided that couldn’t be the case – there were few “Marcus types” out there – only the famous drivers and the European “fill-ins”.

By the time we got back from an evening visit to “The Break” and checked timing and scoring (pretty nicely done, but it really needed to keep track of pit stops), the race had gotten down to a small bunch of Crawfords and Rileys. Mostly with those foreign fill-ins, plus that Tony Stewart guy (he’s the “bad boy”, right?). Jeannie and I head off to our room – we check in with timing and scoring and with dailysportscar before we turn in, then after we get up in the morning. It’s down to two contenders with about four hours to go. I email Malcolm asking what the pit stop difference is for the remaining Crawford and Riley – it will all come down to that, we think. We use the cell phone to determine that the gang is back at “The Break” to start Sunday morning with a Mary.

The Break is graced by two beautiful Golden Retrievers – but no Larry the Legend or Amy the Bartender. Amy doesn’t work weekends, not this time anyway – is that good news for Amy?

Christa (with Jeannie, right), charming and lively, was there, on both sides of the bar, and come August, perhaps a nice forty-ish single sports car driver would drop in…? As for Larry, there are various stories, but the most likely seems to be that Larry moved to South Carolina with his wife. Either that or he is dead. He isn’t likely to have just stopped coming in. The specials here are way too good for a man of Larry’s interests.

Properly prepared now to finish the race, we head to Kelly’s and fire-up TV and computer.

Malcolm has the answer to my question about pit stops, “It doesn’t matter now.” And it didn’t, of course. All the life had gone out of this race, there was less drama from this “best ever” Rolex than there was last year. Tinker all you want, a 24 hour race is still twenty-four hours long (except for last year, of course).

Now, watching the Daytona 500 this weekend, Jeannie and I are truly entertained, for the “Great American Race”, subtitle name notwithstanding, is a race without pretense. It is what it is, a nose-to-tail slam bang shootout between drivers, some of whom we know and like. It’s not about the cars, but about strategy, timing, adjustments, and just plain luck, throughout about four hours of racing. It’s not important until it comes down to a dash to the flag in the last two laps. We expect that, so it’s ok. In fact we have a favorite, and we cheer as if it’s a football game. Still, we’ll watch only three Nextel races this year, the same ones as last year – Daytona, Sonoma, and Watkins Glen. And we don’t want our sport car racing to be more of the same.

Next year we’ll likely make the trip back to Tropical Neenah, and we’ll enjoy the trip. But just as this year, that enjoyment will have little to do with a race.