A Marathon of days, not hours

When I was in High School, I decided to try out for the track team. My time in the 100 yard dash in gym class wasn't too bad, so I thought I might be able to improve with some training. It turned out to be one of the most humiliating experiences of my life. On the first day of practice the coach had those trying out for the team run laps around the football field. Everyone passed me… twice. I never again ran competitively. If anyone asks these days, I quote Calvin Coolidge, "I do not choose to run."

A few years later I discovered road racing, auto racing on a road course, when a friend from high school invited me to be his guest at Donnybrooke Speedway near Brainerd (later re-named Brainerd International Raceway) for a Trans-Am race. I was hooked, and have been involved in sports car motorsports ever since.

While I wanted to go racing, lack of finances kept me off the race track for many years. Instead I worked at the races, and competed in rallies and autocrosses. I became pretty good at rallying, especially as a navigator. There are a few championship trophies among the many boxes in the basement, and I was able to compete in some National events along the way.

Saab 9000S 2.3 on One Lap 1990

On the race track at Sears Point.

The Lost Boys: John Pentelei-Molnar, Satch Carlson and Tim Winker.
Photos by Tim Winker.

After I took over as editor/publisher of the Saab Club Newsletter twenty years ago, I parlayed that rally experience and the promise of appearing in print into several sponsored rides, beginning with One Lap of America in 1990. One Lap was the brainchild of Car and Driver magazine writer Brock Yates. The first few years were literally that, a marathon tour that went around the outer states, beginning and ending in Michigan. In 1990, I talked Saab-Scania of America into loaning me a new Saab 9000S and covering expenses in exchange for a story in the Saab Club magazine (by then renamed NINES). My co-drivers were Satch Carlson, an automotive writer of some note who would provide a story for Saab's customer publication Saab Soundings, and John Pentelei-Molnar, a contributor to Grassroots Motorsports magazine. The 1990 version of One Lap began and ended in Long Beach, California. That year there were several competitions at various race tracks along the way: autocrosses, drag races and rallies. The first was at Sears Point Raceway north of San Francisco for a regularity run, where the driver made a lap of the racetrack, then tried to duplicate his times at various points along the track on a second lap. From there the competitors headed east, with stops at a variety of race tracks for a few hours of competition, then back on the road. On the fourth day we arrived in Newark, New Jersey, for the only overnight stop. Then it was south to Atlanta for a couple of events, then west again with stops in Houston, at Pikes Peak, and in Las Vegas. The awards were presented in Long Beach, following the annual Long Beach Grand Prix through the streets of that city. It was nearly 8,000 miles, eight days on the road, with one overnight stop. Our team of three struggled through the long, dull stretches of road, fighting boredom and drowsiness. Don't forget that this was in the days when the 55 mile-per-hour speed limit was still the law of the land. (That didn't stop me from pushing the speed up to 100 on the long, straight stretch between Wendover, Nevada, and Salt Lake City.)

That experience led to an invite from Satch to join him and Russ Huntoon in a Saab 900 SPG for the Alcan 5000 Rally in September, 1991. The Alcan route that year went from Seattle to Anchorage, then back east and south via The Top of the World Highway and Dawson City, Yukon, to finish in Jasper, Alberta. Teams kept in contact on the road via business band radio in case of emergency, but we often chatted, told jokes, or played mind-boggling trivia games over the airwaves to help the time pass quicker. Our team finished second overall on that event.

I ran One Lap again in 1993 with Ann Geleherter and former Indy car driver Herm Johnson in another Saab sponsored 9000 Turbo. Though the route was only through the eastern half of the U.S., beginning and ending in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the tedium of long hours on the road was hard on all participants. That same car was used on the Downeast 3000 that year, a rally/tour of New England that went as far east as Nova Scotia in Canada, with John Pizzagalli as my sole teammate.

The Saab 9000 used on the 1994 Alcan Winter Rally by Huntoon, Yuill and Winker.
Photo by Brad Yuill.

At the 2004 Targa Newfoundland, Winker served as navigator in a factory-backed Hyundai Tiburon.
Photo by Mardon Erbland.

In 1994, I participated in the winter version of the Alcan in another 9000, with Russ Huntoon and former drag racer Brad Yuill as co-conspirators. That year the course took us well north of the Arctic Circle to Inuvik on the MacKenzie River, and finished in Anchorage. There were a couple of overnight sections, lots of snow and ice to delay our progress, and plenty of moose to dodge along the way. The Northern Lights at that latitude are spectacular and we had to stop a few times just to marvel at nature's light show.

Probably the best motorsports marathon that I have had the honor of participating in was Targa Newfoundland, a week-long rally through the fishing villages of Canada's easternmost province. The first two years (2002-2003) I ran with Scott Giannou in a Porsche 911, the third time (2004) was in a factory provided Hyundai Tiburon with sponsorship from SPEED Channel. One of my all-time favorite experiences was racing the Tiburon through the closed-off streets of a suburban style housing development in Gander.

Though in my mid-50s, I certainly hope that my days of marathon rallying are far from ended. Need an experienced navigator who can also drive? Call me.