News

Racing into 2008!

We are looking forward to a dynamite program of racing in 2008! Our team, Green Baron Motorsports, has taken delivery of the Neon ACR previously driven by 2007 St. Louis Region Club Racer of the Year, Jeff Seelig. We will be campaigning this car in NASA's Performance Touring E class as well as SCCA's Improved Touring A class, driven by Jack Baruth. Meanwhile, Mark Mitias will be campaigning the car in NASA's Time Trial E class. Look for us at tracks around the Midwest!

BIO

Racer, writer, teacher, entrepreneur.

All of these words, as well as many more which don't sound quite as nice in a headline, have been used to describe me. I was born in Brooklyn, New York more than thirty-six years ago, and moved to Ohio around the time Jimmy Carter was booted out of the White House.

From 1984 to 2003 I competed in BMX racing around the Midwest, holding an NBL "A Pro" license from 1992 to the time of my retirement. Over the course of those nineteen years I broke approximately twenty different bones and was injured in all sorts of ways which would be entirely hilarious, had they happened to someone else. Between 1991 and 2004, I wrote approximately 480,000 words about BMX for Bicycles Today magazine and for my own website, BMX Basics. To put it in perspective, that's like writing Moby Dick - twice! I have trained dozens of BMX riders, many of whom have received Pro licenses in BMX and other cycling disciplines.

In 2003 I began training with Brian Makse to pursue a career in automobile racing. Since then, I have won a variety of automotive events, including a class win in the Cannonball One Lap of America and the overall victory in the 24 Hours of LeMons at Flat Rock Speedway. I finished on the podium in all seven of my wheel-to-wheel races this year, including the NASA Championships. After nearly fifteen years of training BMX racers, I resolved that I would never become a driving instructor - but I've been unable to stick to that. I'm now instructing at selected track events, helping novice track drivers explore their potential.

I hadn't planned on becoming an automotive journalist, either - but who can resist the chance to drive other people's cars on racetracks around the world? In 2007 I began writing for SpeedSportLife, providing automotive reviews and a regular column, "Avoidable Contact". I've also worked with Jalopnik. In 2008, I will be racing around the country, both with my team, Green Baron Motorsports, and as a guest driver with a variety of race teams.

As far as a personal life, I have enjoyed a rewarding career arguing with other people over the Internet and occasionally writing an unwanted UNIX program or two. I have been married since 1995; we are child-free but are under the constant tyranny of four cats rescued from local shelters and feral colonies. I collect Allen-Edmonds shoes, with over sixty pairs on my cedar racks, as well as vintage computers, BMX bicycles, high-end watches, Herman Miller furniture, Italian fashion, first-edition John Updike books, contemporaneous editions of eighteenth-century writers, random editions of Shakespeare, and a variety of other things which are interesting to me but surely boring to everyone else. I'm a "car guy" and I own two Volkswagen Phaetons and three Porsches. I am a graduate of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, much to their dismay. That's about it!

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