Monday, January 24, 2011

Back to Blogg'n - Bigelow in the house

I was pretty excited about the group that stopped in the shop last Saturday.  If you're slow on the take like me, you might not recognize the gentleman on the far left - he is famed midget, sprint and Indy car driver Tom Bigelow.  Tom and nephew Buddy Luebke came in to pick up a few wings and additional parts.  Buddy has pulled a couple of Sipple chassis out of the barn which he plans on runnng this season.  Buddy has been running midgets the last year and was interested in what the Midwest Mini Sprint Association has planned for this year regarding a few non-wing races.  When we were talking about the places that the MMSA runs, I brought up Kokomo.  Tom perked up and said 'Oh you guys run at Kokomo, I've been busted up a few times there'.  It was then that I realized that I remember a couple of years ago when Luebke and his uncle Bigelow were a team at the Chili Bowl.  I came pretty close to having a racing legend in our shop and not even knowing it.  I am glad he obliged us the photo next to our car.  I went online and discovered that Tom is a member of both the midget and sprint hall-of-fame.  Tom's a pretty humble guy and probably never would have said anything about it.  I asked him if he ever thinks about getting back in a car again--he said he thinks he will leave up to the youngsters in his family.  He did mention that he might try to get one of his grandsons into the mini sprints.  Tom and Buddy L. are more proof that you meet some of the nicest folks in racing.  I hope Buddy L. gets to come down and race with us a few times this year. 

You've probably heard me make mention of a really cool new battery that we are going to start carrying.  I recently had the chance to meet with the company's owner out in California.  A really nice guy with what we believe will be a really neat product for the mini sprint market.  Check out the story we put together after sitting down with Anti-Gravity Batteries, Scott Schafer.  Click here to read the story

Check it out.  A Yamaha R1 being positioned in a FOZ Race Car.  I am pretty excited about the upcoming season.  I recently counted up six drivers that will be driving FOZ Cars for the first time.  I won't name any names since everyone seems to like keeping their plans for the upcoming season under wraps.  I will say that I think that we will have several of the promising up and coming shoes in our cars this year.  Best of luck in 2011 to all of the FOZ Race Cars drivers.

We will be at the Indy Circle Track Expo this weekend showing off our new Viper Pipes products.  If you make it over to the show we will be in booth 509.  We'll also have along our new tachometer and battery.  They are really nice products that you will want to be sure to check out.  We have also added new products and video to our Viper Pipes website.  You can visit it at http://www.viperpipes.com/.

I was pretty excited to see the new Waynesfield schedule for this year.  Looks like there will be plenty of opportunity for the 1000cc mini sprints there this year.  This has always been one of my favorite tracks and Greg Shobe has been a supporter of the mini sprints since the very beginning.  Good news in my book.

I am looking for someone to help the site out with updates from DuQuoin since we will not be able to attend.  I have it set up so that it is very easy to do updates.  If you are interested, drop me an e-mail at sfasse-at-fozmarketing.com.

That's all for now.  Check back soon.