msrpk.com blog

"The Race is NOT the Only Challenge here at Sebring"

Chatted with GM Racing Boss Mark Kent about a number of things, and a topic that came up was green racing. GM's green racing credentials are solid (with the renewable fueled E85 GT1 Chevy Corvette--soon to be GT2--). They may become even stronger, once the Chevy Volt electric car goes into production. I asked Kent whether one might see the Volt compete on track. Kent said, "Don't rule it out. People love to race, and people will race about anything". Kent said that a lot of work would have to be done by GM and any interested sanctioning body before that would become a reality. We will have more with Kent on some future "Race-Talk" programs.

Dr. Mario Theissen and Bobby Rahal met us assembled scribes for a chat on why BMW returned to the American LeMans Series in the GT2 category. Rahal is heading up BMW's efforts in GT2 against Mazda and soon--the Corvettes. Theissen says BMW has a strategy of competing in racing with the cars they sell. I asked Theissen about the possibility of alternate technologies (similar to the Formula One Kinetic Energy Recovery System they'll use in F1 in about a week) filtering down to Rahal's operation. He says racing sanctioning bodies have to sign off on rules that would allow such a piece to compete. Even in the back of the room, you could see his eyes light up when he said that would be an interesting engineering challenge. Rahal is not just a racer--he is an auto dealer of some repute, especially in the Harrisburg, PA area. Rahal says the "win on Sunday, sell on Monday" mantra really holds true for cars like BMW. He holds a BMW dealer franchise.

All of the ALMS drivers are presently involved in a mandatory driver autograph session. I'd bet such a mandate would be as popular in the NASCAR Sprint Cup garage area as a rain delay.

We'll wrap it up with some driver chat later today.