Hey the shed is missing!

Anyone like myself who has been a regular at Infineon Raceway or should I saw Sears Point, over the last 40 years can tell you there have been some major changes, most of them over the most recent 10 years. One such change almost caused me to fall out of the car this weekend. As we drove around turn 11 someone said, "Hey, the old shed is missing!" "The Shed" as it has been called for many years was nothing more than an old tin building. To call it nothing more than an old tin building is like calling Prince William and Harry's grandmother just another grandma. Boy, if that building could talk... How ironic, it was in that very building that Bob Bondurant helped design the front suspension of the GT350 R Model for Carroll Shelby. It was in that very building that Bob Boudurant and I got into my personal Shelby to go take a drive around the track as we discussed me coming to work for him as a shooting instructor. It was in front of that very building where I first met Paul Newman and in fact at that time Paul used it to store his stable of race cars since he practiced there on a regular basis. Seeing nothing there was like learning an old friend had left us.

Jon, Will and I spent a great weekend at Infineon Raceway racing, eating, enjoying friends and some outstanding weather so I was rested and ready to get a few things done on Lucky today.

One of the items on today's agenda was installing the new racing mirrors on each door. Then I installed a road racing mirror like the kind used on the NASCAR cars that sits high in the door jam. I also removed the vent windows like the Shelbys had to not only lighten things up but more importantly to gain better visibility for the mirrors between the window nets and the door jam. And of course I installed a great convex mirror across the upper roll bar to see just about everything a driver could ever wish to see, including all those other headlights getting smaller and smaller.

After all the mirrors were properly installed, Anthony my son-in-law, helped me trim and install the special 20 pound weight saving rear window that only came in Shelby GT350 R Models. One of the special features for the 1965 GT350 R-Model was the now recognizable R model rear Plexiglas window which was designed by Peter Brock one of Shelby's top designers and Chief instructor at the Carroll Shelby Driving School. It was unique with a 1-inch space at the top which acted as a duct to remove air accumulating inside the car and introducing it as a layer of air over the rear window at speeds. This created what is known as a "Laminar flow" a principal that added an extra 5 horsepower to the car's top speed.