The NMRA is full of racers who have stepped up in class only to struggle because of the new learning curve. Billy Laskowsky, Rich Groh, and Justin Burcham are three such examples. All were at the top of their respective classes before moving up to the next level of competition, and each has struggled with new combinations and finding the limit of their components. We're sure these racers will return to their winning ways, but they've paid a heavy price in their search for power.
Scottsmoor, Florida's Jamie Holten showed us an easier way to successfully enter a new class. His answer was to buy a proven combination and be instantly competitive.
You may remember Jamie. In the late '90s he built a Street Stock Mustang coupe for Fun Ford competition to battle the likes of Cory Roth, Steve Ferguson, and Steve Barton. However, he wasn't able to make it to a Fun Ford event with the car, so he bracket-raced it close to home. The coupe was capable of 10.80s in naturally aspirated form.
Jamie's entry into the heads-up racing world finally came in 1999 when he ran an '86 GT in Fun Ford's Trophy Stock class. He had a successful year in 2000, winning four Fun Ford Trophy Stock events and finishing second in points.
In the December '99 issue of 5.0&SF ("Iron Head Horsepower," p. 99), we installed a pair of Central Coast-massaged GT-40P heads on Jamie's '86. The car was also featured in a dyno shootout in the same issue ("Insane Power," p. 31). Even so, Jamie struggled in 2001. He sold the coupe as a roller because he had his eye on a '95 Mustang. Unfortunately, that car had title issues so he passed on it.
When his wife, Trina, went back to school in 2002, Jamie began to rethink his options. With Trina driving the '86 ex-Trophy Stock car, Jamie bought the '89 hatch you see here just to have something to play with. "I had enough parts to put together a bracket car," he says, "but as anyone who has been successful in heads-up racing, it's hard to get out of your system."
To say the '89 was rough would be a huge understatement. Jamie had to enlist the help of several friends to get the car street-worthy. Andy Davis helped install floorpans and replace the front clip forward of the shock towers. Dan Moore of Moore's Performance helped install the A.R.T. rollbar (in trade for a C4 transmission). Dave Bergman had the daunting task of getting the car's body in shape. A bodyman on the side, Dave replaced the roof skin, repaired a crushed rocker panel, and smoothed out the automotive equivalent of Anna Nicole Smith's backside.
All this time, Jamie had thoughts of returning to heads-up racing for 2004 in either NMRA's Pure Street or Factory Stock, but those plans quickly changed when Robin Lawrence put his '02 Factory Stock combination up for sale. "I wasted no time borrowing the money from my mom to make the purchase," Jamie says. "I knew I could be com-petitive with it and with Robin's help." [If you want to know more about the engine combo, check out "Taking Stock," Sept. '02, p. 157, and "Tuning In," Oct. '02, p. 160-Ed.]
Jamie had to hustle to get the car ready to race in the NMRA Bradenton opener. "Two weeks before Bradenton, the car was basically a shell with half of everything done," he says. "On March 2 the car finally ran, but it was four dif-ferent colors." On March 3 the car went back to Dave Bergman's to get it all one color-primer gray, to be specific. At least with the car in primer, Jamie could get a paint waiver for Bradenton. He'd have the car painted before the NMRA's second stop at Reynolds, Georgia.