Another conversion ready for the track

[eboucher]

Been a pretty long 13 month slog from start to finish, but she’s finally done. Many of you should recognize the livery from mid-90s to mid-2000s Indycar. Had some fun with the naming on the side pods. :-) Heading to Laguna first weekend in July for our first race. Big thanks to Jeff Read for all of his advice and assistance over the last two years.

[E1pix]

One of best racing days of my life was being the only photographer at an Indy Lights test, in Phoenix, March 1993, to shoot a 17 year-old I’d never heard of until the night before.

I flew in from Denver, slept in a rental car at the PIR gate, and wandered into the pits as scheduled. In my wanting to get something in the can, in decent late-morning light (and while all is well since things can happen), I gathered up the driver, engineer, and the driver’s dad for a quick team shot. But they’d just made a chassis change and (surprisingly) *asked* if the shot could await ten laps on the change before it got hotter out.

So the kid goes out and runs a couple warmup laps, I’m running to Turn 1, get one pan shot, he breaks the Indy Lights record by what I recall being 0.8 sec. (hard to fathom as that is), tempts fate to further nether regions, and destroys both ends of the car except the cockpit.

Thankfully the pods with sponsor Viper Auto Security’s art was intact (at least on the left side). I got my shots, spent several, very relaxed hours talking shop about the future with the three-man team, loaded up the crashed car, and soon before dark drove the driver and his Dad to the airport in my “snazzy,” white, rented Chevy Cavalier convertible.

Six years and seven months later was one of the worst days of my racing life. Saw it Live. Knew instantly that he no longer was.

I suspect I needn’t name the driver, though several others ran these colors. But your graphic tribute to him or other Canucks is really wonderful to see.

[eboucher]

I suspect I needn’t name the driver, though several others ran these colors. But your graphic tribute to him or other Canucks is really wonderful to see.

The driver you speak of is exactly who I had in mind when I decided on the livery, but as you say there were several world class drivers that sat in the Players cars, including guys like Tracy, Villeneuve, Carpentier, etc. Proud to fly the colors once more and I’ll do my best to do them justice, but I don’t think I’m worthy of the red gloves.

R.I.P Greg Moore.

[E1pix]

I had a feeling, Eric.

We toured Forsythe in 2000 before the USGP. It was haunting, to be honest. Greg was a sweetheart, he looked really tall for “12,” and so very, incredibly good. I’ll never forget his forlorn look in my rearview mirror on the way to the airport.

Thank You,
Eric

I’ll try to post the two photos I scanned tomorrow... awaiting a tow truck to a friend’s, our engine done blowed up.