endurance

About 12 years ago, I bought my first sports car--my 2000 MR2 Spyder. At the same time, I also joined some online communities devoted to the Spyder specifically as well as the MR2 family in general. These were online forums devoted to all aspects of owning, caring for, and driving these great little sports cars, but you could say that these were in essence car clubs. And although there is a ton of information available to any visitor to these communities online, in the end it is a social experience. The members of these communities plan many local and regional gatherings where you can meet up and not only check out each others' cars in person, but also meet the people involved -- typically people who share the same passion and enthusiasm for cars that you do. And that is how I met Bryan Heitkotter.

In the MR2 community, there tend to be two basic kinds of gatherings. There's the meet up in a parking lot and check out everyone else's car type of meeting, where the focus is usually on who has the latest mods, the fattest rims, the newest body kit on their ride. Maybe hang out and have coffee, or get something to eat together, and just chill. Then there's the other kind -- meet up and drive as a group somewhere, whether purely for the fun of driving, or cruising somewhere scenic like along the coast or up to wine country. I've done my fair share of both types of meets, and they are both fun, but my preference has been to do more of the latter. These MR2s are sports cars, not museum pieces. They were meant to be driven, not just looked at! So I prefer to spend my time driving them. So it happened that a group of MR2 owners suggested a gathering at the local SCCA autocross one weekend, and I went to check it out. Several of us ended up entering in the event, which is basically a timed competitive event driving around a course laid out in traffic cones. It's a great safe way to learn your car's dynamics and work on your performance driving skills. From that I got hooked, got my own racing helmet, and started doing autocross events on a regular basis.

And I started seeing a familiar face, at both the MR2 meetings and at the autocross events: this young kid, he must have been 19 or so, who went by the name of BryanH on the MR2 forums. He owned a first generation 1987 MR2, and drove it like he stole it out on the autocross course. I was a little stunned when I saw that he consistently drove his underpowered, 13 year old car around the course faster than I could drive my brand-spanking new Spyder. And he was modest and humble as could be, showing plenty of admiration for our new MR2s. I kind of compared him to the protagonist of the Inital D anime series, Takumi. Well I just had one thought -- if this kid is this fast in that beat-up old thing, how much faster could he be in my MR2? So I asked him to drive my car at one of the events -- with one caveat, that I get to ride along with him to see how he was driving so fast. What was he doing that I wasn't to be so quick? So we went out there, and ... just wow. I don't really know what just happened there. It was so dramatically different than what I was doing. He was going flat out in areas where I hesitated. Where I braked hard and slowed down for a corner, he tapped the brakes and trusted the car to find its way around the bend at significantly greater speed. And where I fought to keep the car pointed in the right direction, he quickly and intuitively steered and countersteered to maximize forward motion and minimize the skidding around that slowed me down. After seeing him do this on several occasions and seeing him compete at local and national levels, I remember saying to him, "you should really do this for a living. You have a natural skill, a knack for driving that I with all my practice cannot match." At the time he hemmed and hawwed modestly, because realistically who gets the chance to become a real race car driver? Don't you have to basically be bred from birth to be a F1 driver and spend your 2nd birthday tooting around in a shifter kart to qualify? Not to mention find a sponsor.  Over the next few years Bryan started coming out to the meets and events in the Bay Area less because he lived all the way out in Fresno and as you all know the price of gas has been steadily increasing. And I got busy with work so I had to stop doing the autocross events. So we sort of lost touch...

Well fast forward to 2011. I believe I've blogged in the past about my favorite driving game/sim for the PS3, Gran Turismo. They're up to Gran Turismo 5 now which is a fantastic game. In addition to being able to race online with other players, they periodically hold competitive events not terribly different in concept from the autocrosses we used to do.  Get the fastest time around the track that you can, competing online against all the other contestants.  The competition was called GT Academy, with the final prizes being a trip to Silverstone racing circuit in England to compete as one of the final 16 finalists.  And the grand prize being a job with Nissan's racing team as a real life race car driver!  I participated in the first round (everyone who owned the game in North America was eligible to enter), but the competition was fierce and my skill was lacking - I think I ranked somewhere around about 67000.  So I put it aside and went back to playing the game as a regular joe.

A few months ago, when they started publicizing the GT Academy again, on TV and within the game itself.  They filmed the whole final round of GT Academy and it became a reality series that aired on Speed TV.  And lo and behold, the name of the man they crowned as GT Academy USA champion sounded awfully familiar.  The one and only Bryan Heitkotter!  Imagine my surprise and pleasure to hear that this highly skilled and modest guy had managed to take it all the way to the top and had won a contract as racing driver for Nissan's racing team and was living the dream.  If you watch the interview video I've linked above, you'll see what a great and humble guy he is, and hear a little about his story.  I'm a little disappointed that he didn't mention his early MR2 driving roots, although he does talk about autocrossing of course.  Winning GT Academy is no doubt a turning point in his life, because basically he had been living a fairly banal existence, unemployed in Fresno when he entered the competition.  Now that's all changed as he travels the world, testing and racing cars and earning his international competition license under the aegis of Nissan's racing efforts.

Who knows how far Bryan's star will continue to rise, but right now he is doing something pretty amazing:  this weekend he is in Dubai, along with 3 other GT Academy champions from past competitions in the U.S. and Europe.  They are campaigning a Nissan 370Z race car in the Dubai 24 Hours endurance race which has already started, and ends in about 10 hours.  Best of luck to you, Bryan, and the RJN racing team -- kick ass and take names!

More info about the race and where to find info about the Dubai race, on GT Planet:
http://www.gtplanet.net/2012-dubai-24-hours/