The Inaugural Spectre 341 Challenge
By Amir Rosenbaum – Founder

Mark Gillies, Car & Driver Executive Editor and accomplished race car driver extraordinaire looked me in the eye and murmured something to the effect of;  “You know, they lose at least one a week at the Nürburgring…… ”

No, I didn’t known that.

Was that supposed to be comforting?

It was 4:45 pm. Our First Spectre 341 Challenge had just finished and the last 2 cars were up on the course. The paramedics and fire truck crews stationed at the top and bottom of the hill had packed up their stuff and were ready to pull out and go home when the call came in on the radio  “……… car  over  the  side……… ”

Shit!

The Spectre 341 Challenge is a very unique happening in that it is very real. It is all about reality. And I’m not talking about reality TV, which is anything but real.  Reality consists of intangibles. The human condition consists of intangibles. We are all irrational illogical creatures trying to act rational and logical. But we can’t. We live in a super high tech world where we try to break everything down into precisely defined measurements using micro-metrics and nano-bytes. And while we are able to measure just about everything, the most important stuff, the intangible stuff, can’t be contained within any sort of metric.

We can’t even describe it.

Intangible: adj. – impalpable, untouchable, incorporeal, abstract, elusive, indefinable, ethereal, ghostly, spectral.

The Spectre 341 Challenge is a 5.2 mile mountain road with 22 [ or so ] turns and is most emphatically not a race track. It wasn’t designed by a race track designer, it was built to conform organically to the side of a mountain so that ore carts, and later, trucks, could bring their deposits to a place where they could be processed.

It is as real a road as you will ever encounter anywhere, other than probably the Nürburgring. None of the turns are the same. The camber of the roadway changes radically,  for no rhyme or reason. From afar, some of the straight sections of roadway look like a long piece of orange Hot Wheels track, twisting back and forth. Never straight or flat. A “correct” line here means avoiding the snow markers, which are sometimes positioned right where you would want to apex a corner. And sometimes not. And they get replaced every few years with new ones that crop up in different spots.
There are very few guardrails. None where you think they should be. There are no run-off areas, no tire walls, no hay bales, no berms, no nothing. The drop offs are everywhere and they are unforgiving.

It certainly wasn’t an easy event to put on. On our first day, just as we were scheduled to start running it started to rain. That’s right, in the Nevada desert. In June! Are you kidding me? This cannot be happening. Rain? Really? Or, I guess, reality.

And then it stops raining, and we are about to flag our first car on the course when the paramedic van and fire truck pull out, sirens blaring and lights flashing. WTF? Turns out that if there is a highway emergency nearby, and they are the closest, they get the call. And of course reality dictates that a highway emergency will occur just when you are about to start. But we paid for them to be here! For us! Doesn’t matter, someone needs them more than we do, and so off they go. And we don’t go. Man, this reality is starting to suck.

After only 20 minutes or so the fire truck and paramedic van returned and we finally got going. By Saturday afternoon we had logged 204 runs. That is truly amazing and a testament to all the time, hard work and professionalism invested by our crew at Spectre Performance and the terrific organizers we hired; Jimi Day and Wally Olczac of FM3 Marketing.

In 2002, after 13 years of running the hill, I set an all time record of 3:10 in my not so highly modified Ferrari F40. Everyone thought it was highly modified. OK, we ran a cheater hose from the waste gates to fool them into thinking the car was at sea level, which increased the boost a little. That’s about it. The secret to running so fast? It’s all in the intangibles……..
So everyone is asking me what I think about the possibility of my record getting broken. And I respond with a pat answer, something like  “yeah, well, you know, records are meant to be broken……..”

What a crock.

The truth is I had already started to put my F40 back together after running it on the Bonneville Salt Flats at over 220 MPH. I’ll be ready and running at the Second Annual Spectre 341 Challenge in 2011. You can count on it!

Records are be made to be broken my ass.

But this year, for the Inaugural Spectre 341 Challenge, we had  a bunch of phenomenal drivers, awesome cars and some very very fast times. Here they are, from the top of the hill:

Mark Gillies, from Car & Driver magazine showed up in a 2010 Viper ACR. It is a “borrowed” car, on loan from Chrysler/Dodge/Fiat whatever they are called now.
I wonder, what did he tell them he was going to do with this car? A road test? Check the mileage? Well, yeah, this would be a test all right. The car shows up with 80 tread-wear tires, and for this, our first inaugural event, we had spec’d a 100 tread-wear minimum. We decide to let him run in an exhibition class, and what an exhibition it was! A 3:19. First time ever on this hill. What does this mean? It means that Mark Gillies is a very very competent race and street car driver, possessing intangible skills that cannot be honed on race tracks. This is a street racer’s street racer. Mark got 14 runs in, as well as the two fastest times. Until you come here and drive the course, you can’t really imagine how fast a 3:19 is for a first time driver. Or for any driver. Hopefully Mark will be back next year, with boost. If he does, he’ll be way faster. This guy is really good. The real deal. And, Mark gets inducted into the Spectre 3:41 Club, of course.

The official First Place, with a time of 3:21 goes to Lou Gigliotti in his super bad 2010 Corvette ZR1, bristling with all sorts of LG Motorsports parts and exhausting what smelled an awful lot like what you smell at the airport when jets take off. Lou got to run a total of 13 times, another first timer at the hill, but with a pair of 3:21’s and a pair of 3:22’s, he got it going on in a big way. No small thanks to hill veteran and ultra fast driver himself, Guy Cunningham, who would have competed more this year, except he and his lovely wife Soraja handled all of our catering. Guy gave Lou a ride in the Griggs Racing GR40 Mustang, and Lou, consummate professional and quick study that he is, promptly knocked 6 seconds off of his times, and cinched 1st place and membership into the Spectre 3:41 Club.

Second place for 2010, with a time of 3:22, goes to Steve Millen. Yes, that Steve Millen, of IMSA, LeMans and Pikes Peak fame and owner of the super parts company Stillen. Steve brought a race prepped looking Nissan GT-R, a crew, and enough pre-event smack talk to embarrass a politician leading in the polls, boasting on his website that not only were they going to beat the record, they were possibly going to go under 3 minutes. Then reality struck. It looks like the Kiwi gets to eat crow, right?  No, not so fast [ hah, pun! ]. See, Steve and crew had to rush the car to the event, and also worry about having to prep it and stick it on a boat on the Tuesday morning after for an event in Steve’s homeland, New Zealand, which meant that the car showed up on its stock Bridgestone run flat tires that weigh probably 65 lbs. each and have the frictional grip of olive oil on a Teflon pan. Steve only took 9 runs, declaring the course “greasy” and stopping early.

If you don’t understand the value of tires, then you can’t possibly understand the heroics pulled off by Steve in running a 3:22. This is not the proverbial knife at a gunfight. This is bringing a note from your Mum to the gunfight. Steve says he’ll be back next year, with a second car for son Kyle too, and tires that do more than just hold air. I can’t wait. Steve gets a Spectre 3:41 Club membership as well.

Third place is probably the most impressive to me; local boy Jeremy Kappus in a Mitsubishi Lancer Evo RS, with some modifications, sure, but at the end of the day it’s still a 4 cylinder car up against these monster engined machines. Jeremy ran a 3:25.5 on Saturday afternoon. He had already run a 3:25.8 on Friday. In fact, on Friday, at the end of the day, he had the fastest time of anyone. Most of his 14 runs were in the 3:27/3:26 range, so he is not only very fast, he is also very consistent. And like I already said, just outstanding! It is an honor to present Jeremy with membership into the Spectre 3:41 Club.

Next up: Guy Cunningham, a veteran of the hill, who ran 3:28 in the Grigg’s Racing 2007 GR40 Mustang. I am sure that were it not due to his catering commitment, for which we are all grateful, Guy would have run even faster yet. And even though Guy was already a 3:41 Club member since 1999, he did improve his time by 1 second.

Ezra Dyer, one of the funniest car journalists I know, showed up in another “loaner” car, a bone stock 2010 Porsche Turbo. With only 9 runs, due to having to leave early to catch a plane, Ezra beat the living daylights out of this showroom fresh [ not anymore ] car with a best time of 3:33 and membership into the Spectre 3:41 Club. That’s at an average speed of almost 88 MPH. That’s average. Many of the corners are marked at 25 MPH, so even if you triple that, it’s honking fast.

Our last 2010 entry into the 3:41 Club goes posthumously to Alexander Djordjevic with a time of 3:36,  run on Friday, in a highly modified Porsche 996 Twin Turbo. In order to respect the families’ wishes, I will only say that this was a tragic and unfortunate incident that is all too real. Our heartfelt thoughts and prayers go out to his friends and family.

Besides the 3:41 Club inductees, there were several other drivers of note that helped make this event so special: J.P. Rademacher, in a Subaru WRX STi had the most number of runs with 20! I believe he had to go get gas twice in order to accomplish this feat.

Another local boy, Adam Auerbach brought out what is probably the most intensely engineered GMC Syclone on the planet. You have to see the pictures to believe it. Truly an epic exercise in performance engineering.

Gaetano Cosentino brought out a beautiful ‘69 Camaro and Jeff Smith brought his ageless ‘65 Chevelle and both guys ran under 4:00 minutes, with 3:59 times, which is incredible when you think that this is their first time on the hill, driving cars that are over 40 years old! Seriously, is there any worry about metal fatigue? Lack of technology? Who needs technology? Check out the photos as these are some of the best looking cars on the hill for sure, and they are very fast too.

But those cars are spring chickens compared to Dean Smith’s 1952 DeSoto. Hey, that car is 58 years old! And he ran at an average speed of almost 70 MPH.

Jody Takagi drove 15 hours straight from Seattle in her Boxster, after being nominated by her Forum group (6-speed Online), and then did them proud by running a very respectable 4:22 with an average speed of 71 MPH. This is an excellent result for a first timer at the hill, who brought her mom for moral support. Jody livened up the weekend with her enthusiasm and infectious smile. We want her back for sure! And mom too.

One other mention I need to highlight is Paul Feeny, who couldn’t bring the car he wanted to bring, so instead he bought a Miata on eBay for $202.50 and brought that, and ran a 4:14 at almost 74 MPH, and for sure got the best bang for the buck of anyone. That’s real too.

We will be announcing the dates and rules for the 2011 Second Annual Spectre 341 Challenge very soon. We’re planning for a bigger and better event next year where once again, we try to define the intangibles of what is the fastest street car on a real road, ever. In the mean time, keep it real.