Rather than try to tell a great story from afar, I am simply quoting a wonderful article that Rob wrote up after his awesome finish at the 2007 Redline Time Attack at Laguna Seca. Enjoy!

Fast Car, Furious Wife

Redline Time Attack

Krider lives life on the edge (of his marriage)

by Rob Krider

As cheesy as it may sound, when I was a kid and I saw the Burt Reynolds movie Cannonball Run, I knew right then and there that I wanted to be a racecar driver (I also wanted a hairy chest). But since my last name wasn’t Earnhardt, I didn’t exactly grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth, or more appropriately, a silver steering wheel in my hands. That meant if I wanted to race cars I would have to grow up and do two things: one, get a car and find a race, and two, convince my wife it was a good idea.

The first part was made very easy by the guys and gals at Redline Time Attack (www.redlinetimeattack.com). These good folks put together a cool racing series where a regular Joe (that’s people like you and me) could take their car to a professional racetrack and compete against the clock. Drivers in similar cars race against each other based on their fastest lap time. Don’t worry, no mathematics are necessary. The Redline Time Attack staff take care of all of the complicated stuff. As a driver, all you have to do is go out on the track, bury your right foot into the accelerator and hold on.

Before I could enter the race I had to convince my wife, whom I love, that racing was safe and inexpensive (rumor has it auto racing can kill you and if it doesn’t, it will bankrupt you and you’ll wish that it had killed you.) She was already mad at me for spending our money on my Nissan Sentra SE-R. Racing it was only going to infuriate her. So to convince my wife that running the Redline Time Attack was a good idea, I bought her some diamond earrings. It turns out racing really is expensive.

Before I entered the event I decided that my Sentra could use a little more power. To get more bang for my buck, I enlisted the help of the Nissan tuning geniuses at Jim Wolf Technology who reprogrammed the computer in my Sentra. I know how to change the oil in my car (barely) but I don’t know a thing about the car’s computer. I hardly even know how to forward e-mail on my home desktop let alone know how to program the computer in my car to make it go faster. Luckily, people a lot smarter than me at Jim Wolf Technology know what they are doing and they made my car wicked fast.

To get an idea of how fast they made it I took my car to Edge Motorworks and put the Nissan on the dyno. The dyno is a machine which measures horsepower and torque. If you have no idea in the world what I am talking about here is simple a rule: You can never have too much horsepower. Horsepower good. Before I made any improvements, my car rated at a measly 110 horsepower on the dyno. Then I added the Jim Wolf Technology computer and pop charger air filter and got 124 horsepower, an impressive eleven percent increase at minimal time and cost. Yeah baby, it was time to race.

Redline Time Attack was having its big year end finale at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in Monterey. The interesting thing about Laguna Seca it is located within a Monterey County park and the scenery surrounding the track is beautiful. It is so beautiful that a lot of people started building houses around the track. You can guess what comes next; these people who built their house next to a racetrack started to complain that the racetrack is too loud. Really? A race track loud? You think?

So to keep local residents happy the racecars have to be quiet. How quiet exactly? A whopping 92 decibels and not a squirrel fart louder. How do I know this? My car at wide open throttle (which is how I drove it constantly) measured at 94.2 decibels. This earned me some grief at the Redline Time Attack. If I didn’t get my car to quiet down I was out of the race. My hopes for glory were quickly fleeting.

I was standing in the pits, leaning against my car, contemplating the magnitude of the situation (I had concluded I was screwed) when a gentleman started asking me questions about the Nissan Motorsports stickers on my car. After we shot the breeze for a few minutes he introduced himself to me as Lee Mitchell and told me that he races Nissans and his son owns a chassis tuning shop specializing in Nissans called M-Workz. I told Lee about my sound level woes and he said he brought a muffler that didn’t fit on his son’s Nissan 350Z but would probably fit my car perfectly. After about ten minutes of drilling, hammering and cursing, I was on the track and driving my car for all that it was worth. I did this at an eco-friendly 89 decibels.

Everything came into play at just the last second before I was to compete in the Redline Time Attack for my official timed runs. When the green flag waved, I had three laps to get it done. I drove my Nissan like it was somebody else’s, punishing the car through every corner and revving the motor to the new Jim Wolf Technology programmed redline of 8000 revolutions per minute (trust me, that’s a lot). I ran the car through the course on the ragged edge and using everything I had learned from the instructors at the Skip Barber Racing School, I somehow finished in third place. When the smoke cleared I was on the podium and getting a trophy!

The Redline Time Attack trophy ceremony was filled with camera flashes, video crews and more importantly, a casually dressed trophy girl (when I say casually dressed, I mean she was so casual she forgot to wear most of her clothes). She handed me my third place trophy and a kiss. The innocent little victory kiss earned me couch time when I got home. Now, before I can run the next Redline Time Attack, I have to convince my wife racing isn’t dangerous, isn’t expensive and doesn’t lead to me kissing other women. In horse racing that’s called a trifecta.

For more on the car, check out:  http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2978926

(Rob spends his nights alone on the couch watching Smokey and the Bandit.)