Datsun Roadster Forum-311s.org

From Kurt Hafer:
"After Dave Stone's maiden voyage in the freshly restored ex-Bob Sharp (and Paul Newman) #33 240Z lost a clutch slave cylinder yesterday and DNF'd (after having started last and rapidly moving through the field), Adam Carolla and Steve Link carried the Datsun banner today.

Adam started 14th in the #44 ex-Frank Morise BRE Datsun Roadster, but finished 7th, in an epic battle with a trio of Alfa GTVs that he passed one by one. Steve Link (son of Floyd link, of BRE team fame) tried to pass them as well, but had to settle for 11th I believe, behind all three Alfas. Adam was clocked at 100mph as he'd enter the braking zone before turn 5, and had lap times in the 1:52s. For reference, the Can-Am cars in the final race of the day were clocked at 147mph in the same spot, and were turning 1:25s."

I hear that Adam had some special carb tuning help from one of our community I guess it helped!

Cheers
James

Wow, 1:52s, that puts some things into perspective. I was running 1:55s, and I know I was leaving time on the track. To further put things in perspective, Tim Arnett runs 1:47s in his roadster with a pretty much stock B cam motor

Thats awesome to see the two roadsters sitting pretty well up in the standings. Hopefully they will be welcomed back in the future.

Will

Since I do not get to post very often I thought I would give a little update on the race at the Monterey Historics where the BRE Datsun 2000 Frank Monise car made its racing debut with Adam driving it for the fiirst time in a race as we only had a handful of test laps with Adam and John Morton a couple weeks ago. After testing it was decided to remove the S U carbs and install the Mikuni carbs due to the huge cam in this engine. So with only 2 quick dyno pulls we left for the track knowing we were close to being ready and of course nervous about the fresh restoration and would the car stay together and do OK in the race.
Our first stop in Monterey was to drop of the car at the McCall Party wed evening which is quite an honor and this party is a once in a lifetime event put on by a Datsun fan himself Gordon McCall who's party donates much of its proceeds to charity. The car got a little bit of respect even though is sat with some terribly expensive supercars form Aston Martin and Ferrari, and Lambroguini newest cars and Steve Moals latest hotrod and a whole myriad of the latest business jets and fighter planes. Indeed a wonderful opportunity for us and the car to showcase the BRE name and we caught up with Peter and Gayle Brock as they were leaving the party and they were very happy with the car and extremely complimentary of the work we had done and pleased that at the last minute we had also peeled off all the vinyl decals and had the car hand lettered by an 81 year old sign painter who got it very close to original. The car was delivered back to the track on Thur morn and we were ready to take it out for its first laps ever at Laguna Seca and Adams first laps in anger(racing) as well. During the first practice session the 40 something year old original tach gave up the ghost and left Adam feeling a little weird about how high he was shifting so we installed a modern electronic tach as a temporary fix and the friday session went off without a hitch but in our haste we never went and got time sheets to see how we placed so when we finally got the sheets on Sat morning we were surprises to see that we placed in front of Steve Link in the other roadster both days and this would continue into the sun morning qualifying which would position us in 12th before a flag issue dropped us back to 14th with Steve right on our tail in the 15th spot for the trophy race at 3:30 Sun afternoon. On sunday morning I had invited my old friend Dave Premo down to see if we could get a little more out of the carbs since I knew they were not ideal and we had an issue on the tight left hander at turn 11 we were able to improve it but it ended up being a little more of a gear issue so 1 st gear instead of 2nd was the answer but special thanks to Dave for coming down and helping and he got to meet Adam and watch some great racing. The trophy race started out with Adam getting a pretty good jump on the other roadster and putting behind another 4-5 cars so with that cushion Adam went to work passing as many cars as he caught but so did Steve but try as he could he was not able to catch Adam who had gotten up to 7th overall out of 41 original cars in the 7B group and both Adam and Steve turned 1.50 times with Steve getting a 1.49.5 on 1 lap and both being in some traffic most of the time. For a first time car and our first time out and the fantastic drive that Adam had this was a memorable weekend. The icing on the cake came almost an hour later when I got a call from Steve who attended the awards ceremony and found out that Adam was the winner of the Rolex Cup for group 7 B which is quite a prestigious award to win because it does not go to the winner but to the best car as presented and driven and overall it is chosen by people who may or may not understand the historical significance of the car but like it for their own reasons. I do not feel that this award because Adam is a celebrity but the fact that he wanted this car to be correct and he drove the wheels off it to finish so high in the field and it was pretty much the only race within the race. I feel very honored to be involved in such a cool project and we have many more cool historic cars to build and I wanted to say it was great to see so many of my Datsun friends that I do not get to see too often anymore and thank all of you who made it out and came by to see us. Thanks for helping make it a great weekend and Adam sure appreciates it as well and enjoys meeting all of you and my hope is to bring this cool car to Solvang next year and maybe get Adam to come up as well. I tried this year but we had a race that weekend so I hope the normal scheduling issues will allow us to come back to Solvang again thanks to all of you for your support and wonderful compliments. Again I feel extremely honored to help preserve this rare history.
Les

Excellent write up with some cool inside information! Thanks for posting Les and congratulations.

I second that Les - great job on the car and kudos to you and Adam for a great race and winning the Rolex Cup.

Cheers
James

Hats off to Les, and Classic Datsun Motorsports.

Such an impressive historical build & so cool that the car had such a great running on the track.

Congratulations.

datsun65 wrote:Hats off to Les, and Classic Datsun Motorsports.

Such an impressive historical build & so cool that the car had such a great running on the track.

Congratulations.

2nd that!

Did I say we won the Rolex Cup maybe that was the Piston Cup I don't know as I am almost too tired to remember most of it and I also needed to thank my guys here at the shop Aaron Lowry and Ed Johnson who's trans work helped that rare original BRE Ultra close racebox make the whole weekend. Our sign painter Stan was also very helpful and was very excited to be involved with this project and Thanks to the Brocks for gettting us the first set of the new Lemans style wheels so that we would not have to run the original magnesium rims. I am sure I will forget others that were somehow involved but this is never a one man show and I am just a facilitator. Thanks All
Les

The car is stunning.










I wish I could have caught Adam out on track. Les, you guys did a very remarkable job on the restoration. I hope I can see it out on track some day, (or even race along side it)

Of all the cars there, this car could be the most important Japanese sports car in SCCA racing history. Had BRE not done so well with this car, the whole Japanese sports car phenomenon might have been very different.

Well done.

Will

I was able to take a few photos with my cell phone. A friend of mine who had a real camera might have a few really good shots as well.