DS: I'm here in southern England to interview the driver for one of the "away" teams in the GT400 - Spiny Anteater from Slow Tunes. They will be familiar to those of you who watched the Clio Cup of 2008 and now they are making the step up to the GT400s in their classic Lamborghini Miura.
<Cut to interview>
DS: The car of choice in this series appears to be the RX-7 in various guises. Why, when everyone else is eschewing cylinders did you decide to go for 12 of them?
SA: Well, the thing is that we are going to struggle to run in all of the events. The costs are very high to run such an old car and we knew with Snyder around we would struggle to be competitive. We decided that the best way we could make an impression to to run a car which stood out from the crowd rather than being fast. When a classic Miura came up at auction needing a bit of TLC, it seemed ideal - after all there are very few cars which look better than a Miura. Of course, people from back in the day will know that I would have loved to have run a Shelby Cobra, but those things are just too powerful for this class..
DS: It has been noted by a number of competitors that you did not get to race at Sebring. Why is that?
SA: We'd have loved to have raced at Sebring - we've run against many of the competitors in pre-season testing and feel that we can be competitive with most of them given the right track. The Miura may be lightweight and pack a lot of horses under that shapely body, but it's real strong point is it's turn-in. It has already appeared strong against other entrants at Laguna in testing while private testing at Silverstone has yielded a personal best. So we feel we could have been competitive and been challenging for a podium, although our lack of straightline speed means we would probably have struggled to beat Pete in a race. Sadly, we had to make a late trip to France to meet one of our sponsors, Ch'Ti beer, for a promotion for them. As they have generously fuelled both car and team
for the season we felt we had to make the trip as a debt of honour. On the trip it rained very heavily - that got into the electronics (yes, even old cars have them) and we just couldn't get the car ready in time. We're hoping to be ready for the next race, but can't give any guarantees yet.
DS: The next race is at Laguna Seca - how do you think you'll fare.
SA: We think we have a good chance. The car goes well at this track and the tyres seem to last a long time. We need to run the calcs first, but as far as we can tell our biggest issue is going to be fuel. It looks like we'll be stopping once, but obviously we can't say when as that would give the game away
DS: Thanks for that Spiny - hope to see you in California. At least you won't have to cope with this snow.
SA: Thanks Dorsey - see you at Laguna
