An Inauspicious Introduction to IMSA at 19 Years Old.

I can’t seem to find the few pictures my father’s friend took of me working on the Spice-Pontiac V8 IMSA GTP car back in 1990, so these lone shots of Racecraft International GTP Light’s Spice-Pontiac 4cyl cars will have to do. (If anyone has pics of the 1990 Racecraft GTP car, please email me!)

IMSA had been my favorite sportscar series for many years, and when the opportunity arose to join my then boss Bob Lesnett on the Racecraft team as a mechanic, I jumped at the chance to get my hands on my beloved GTP beasts. History will tell you that of the more impressive GTP teams on the IMSA radar, Racecraft International was cloaked in stealth bomber technology.

It wasn’t a team to be feared (unless you were lapping one of the barely capable rental drivers), yet for a pup like myself making his own debut in big time pro racing, it was a relatively safe environment to learn and grow my own skills. If anything, I was relieved to find that the past four years spent learning in the pro racing feeder series of Super Vee, the ACRL Sports 2000, FF2000, and Formula Atlantic had primed me to ease into joining a GTP team with few concerns.

Dealing with some of the paying drivers proved to be a major education for me; George Sutcliffe, a Barber Saab standout, soon learned that the skills that pushed him forward in Barber Saab were insufficient to bring anything like the same form in IMSA GTP. I recall being quite frustrated after he radioed in in the middle of a practice session, yelling the gearbox had packed up and wouldn’t shift into most of the gears. He said he’d have to coast in because the transmission was broken.

We met him at the top of pitlane, pushed the Spice back to the trailer, and tried to rip the ‘box open and get it fixed in time to get back out before the session ended. This was in the days before data acquisition was prevalent in all forms of pro racing, or for any of the privateer teams like Racecraft Int’l–we considered ourselves lucky to have a Stack “Tachtale” gauge that could recall peak RPM!

Without any data to rely on, it was common to rely on the driver for analysis and feedback from his time behind the wheel–that was the norm.

After opening the heavy, seemingly white-hot gearbox, we found everything to be intact, all the sift forks to be in place, and no bits of metal stuck to the internal magnet as we’d expected to find. Vexed and in pain from hands that were searing from everyone jumping in to collectively open the gearbox, I can still see the expression on everybody’s face when Sutcliffe wandered back from the bathroom to see what we were doing, and said “why’d you do all that? I just meant I had a hard time getting it into gear.” Responding to both his panic and conviction about the ‘box, we’d jumped on fixing it immediately. From then on, Sutcliffe’s opinions on the car were largely disregarded.

The English chief mechanic mumbled under his breath that he thought he might be able to kill Sutcliffe and get the murder charges thrown out on an insanity plea once the jury heard him re-tell the “broken gearbox” story. I seem to remember the rest of the crew offering to help him if he wanted a hand carrying out his plans…

Despite Sutcliffe, the rest of the team was a joy to work with–maybe not the best in their field, but at 19, I was by no means a star player yet myself. I dreamt of changing a tire during pitstops, or something equally as glamorous, but being the rookie, I was entrusted to an aerosol can of glass cleaner, a paper towel, and the highly critical task of making sure the windshield would pass for vaguely clean. Before I jumped back across the pit wall, I also cleaned debris from the front radiator inlet and helped to pull a front tire over the wall.

These were trivial jobs, but like any good apprenticeship, it was necessary for me to master the basics before being entrusted with anything more the following year. Racecraft was out of IMSA before the next season even started, and I’d moved onto more Toyota Atlantics with Bob Lesnett, and a championship in the 1991 ACRL Sports 2000 series with Cameron-McGee Motorsports.

The Sports 2000’s were just smaller open-topped prototypes, so it wasn’t too much of a letdown for me.

My IMSA GTP fortunes were limited to 1990, yet serve as one of the most prized eras of fulfillment and joy in my career. Wiping down the windshield of a Spice-Pontiac GTP car was about as minimal a duty as one could be given during a race, but between you and I, I’d keep one eye fixed on the windshield, and the other eye fixed on pitlane to capture the Nissan, Jaguar, Toyota, and Porsche GTP cars zooming less than two feet from my backside at triple-digit speeds. I’d have paid any price for those experienced if I’d been asked to.

Those images, sounds, and the raw excitement of standing on pitlane with the cars and hero’s of prototype lore screaming past me will never be lost.

Bloodlines of Passion and Speed

I’m especially proud to have followed in my father’s footsteps. As an amateur and eventual semi-pro driver, my dad drove some incredible cars to many wins. Before his days as a driver, he was introduced to racing as a mechanic. His passion for cars was born from his youth spent in Arkansas–with little to do, terrorizing the dirt road surrounding Lee County near his birthplace of Marianna was the preferred form of mischief.

After leaving Marianna for Chicago, and four years spent in the Army, he returned to Chicago and found work in construction in the summer, and working on cars indoor during the harsh Midwest winters. From his growing skills fixing cars, the hot road racing scene was a natural attraction for him. It wasn’t long before he was working for the famous “Foreign Car Hospital,” and helping with their own racing efforts on the weekends.

The photo below is of my dad helping a customer to setup his Lotus Formula Junior (I know my Lotuses fairly well, but I must admit that the crumples and fading have me only guessing at the model and class—drop me a note if you know what it actually is) at Milwaukee in the early ’60’s. How cool is that!

I do take great pride in the fact that I’m carrying on my father’s passion, his name, and have indeed made a long career out of the sport that he only worked in until he was 23 or 24. He was always involved afterwards, but focused on owning and running a variety of European car garages. He raced all throughout my life, and despite a hiatus for most of the ’80’s, he went back through driver’s school with me when I entered for the first time in a Tiga Formula Ford we bought in a crate and built together. Again, how cool was that!

He was always a Lotus man, and loved anything he could find and build to an inch of its limits. Using the connections grown from his “Pruett’s Olde English Garage” shop in Burlingame, CA, my dad was always pressing customers and acquaintances for the whereabouts of a Lotus Cortina, Louts 23, or any British oddity that needed a lot of love before being track worthy.

With the home-built Lotus 23B seen below, my father and his partner Rick Sturiza shared driving the 23B in the San Francisco SCCA region. The two were in a constant battle with the newer, more powerful Lotuses of Tom Foster and Chuck Billington–I think my eternal support for an underdog came from watching my dad and Rick taking on and often beating the filthy rich Foster and Billington team. What a brilliant way to let a young child (I was 6 or 7 at the time) grow up!

As I tell most people that ask how I got into racing, one of my first memories on this planet happens to be of me at 3yrs old, sitting on the ground in the upper paddock at Sears Point (near the original Turn 2 bridge), helping my dad pick the bigger rocks that were stuck to the tires on his Lotus Cortina. Being involved, included, and in love with the sounds, smells, and images of racing from such a young age, it’s not a mistake that it has served as my most enduring passion.

I’ll continue to add more pictures of my dad as I have time, but until then, know that regardless of what I’ve accomplished in racing, my life as a motorsports professional was started by helping my dad at 3yrs old— my career is just a continuation of what Marshall Pruett Sr. started back in ’60’s.

1986-1988: An Early Start in Motorsports

Wow.

‘Guess I’m not afraid to publish embarrassing pictures of myself anymore.

I look like I’m still waiting for puberty to hit, and my shorts look like they’re made from Muppet pelts.

Priceless.

This was shot at the Carlsbad track in ‘86 when we won an SCCA National club race. “We” happened to be Mike McHugh, long time family friend, bon vivant, and SCCA Pro Super Vee racer. I still have the checkered flag pictured here–my first flag from my first team victory.

He and my father had known each other since the ’60’s, and when my dad stopped racing in the early ’80’s, the spark of interest that came from my childhood spent at race tracks reignited. It only seemed logical to wander over to Mike’s house, a 10 minute walk, and ask if I could help him with his race car.

Frankly, and despite my having grown up at the race track and at my dad’s auto shop, I had no experience or qualifications to come within 10 feet of a Super Vee. My simple mind saw a cool looking car, wanted to be around it, and hoped I could have a role in McHugh’s team. At sixteen, and still in High school, this was a dream opportunity—something I’d skip my Senior Prom and most other events in deference to a race with Mike.

Entrusted as the “Windex Engineer,” and official team “Gofer,” Mike was beyond gracious in letting me drool over the car, ask hundreds of painfully stupid questions, and on a good day, complete one mistake-free task.

Cleaning the bottom of the car was a common punishment-slash-corrective tool used to wake me up.

At least he didn’t roll up a newspaper and swat me in the nose…

He wasn’t always forgiving of the 29 blatant mistakes-to-1-mistake-free task ratio I had, but in order for me to learn, how could he have been?

Mike’s wife, Colleena, was very gracious in dealing with me. I’m not sure what the senior mechanics thought about me, but as most pups in racing encounter, the veterans heckled the h*ll out of me in trade for teaching me a few low level responsibilities. Back then, and unlike now where many schools exist for those wanting a career in motorsports, the tradition was one of apprenticeship and old racing wisdom passed down to the new guard.

I’m quite proud to have learned at the heels of some great veterans, and it all started with McHugh’s Pro Super Vee team.

I can say that there were times when I thought I’d made the wrong choice of desired careers—it took a while for my proverbial light bulb to turn on, but when it did, the structure of racing, individual tasks, and greater levels of expectation and execution finally made sense.

Doing Pro Races were mind blowing at first; rolling out to pitlane for my first Super Vee practice came just as an Indycar session ended. Seems we were slotted next to Mario Andretti’s pits. At sixteen, I nearly shat myself when I looked up and saw MARIO ANDRETTI standing 5ft from me. This was a guy of mythic proportions in my young life–a poster of his championship winning JPS Lotus adorned my bedroom wall for years. He was someone I’d never dreamt of standing next to on that pitlane, or heck, ANY pitlane for that matter. I later had the same kind of encounter with Rahal, Unser Sr., and every other driver of importance.

I’m sure the starry-eyed kid staring at them was an odd thing to encounter, but for me, these were “OK, Lord, Rick Mears just smiled at me—you can take me now!” kind of revelations. It’s funny how years later, and having worked amongst so many of these folks as a professional and competitor, there’s still that teenager inside me that thinks “Hey, I’m talking with RICK freakin’ MEARS about aero balance in today’s overcast conditions…”

What a blessed life I’ve led to walk and work amongst my heroes (just don’t tell them so…)

McHugh was an extremely good driver, and had solid fortunes with his Anson SA4-VW. We had plenty of other interesting club and pro experiences in my time with him–I stayed from ‘86 through early ‘88, and left after the Phoenix CART/Pro Super Vee race when I left to take a full-time job as a race mechanic with TR Raceservice. I maintained and ran anywhere between 4 and 8 formula cars a weekend, and we also fielded a Pro Formula Atlantic effort.

I met McHugh as a kid with enthusiasm and no skills, but thanks to Mike and his team, left to take a job two years later to single handedly maintain a big stable of formula cars based on the potential he saw in me and cared enough to develop.

Thanks Mike.