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| Through The Esses - John Vincent's V-Pack Motorsport Isn't Exactly Monkey Business |
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Headshot by Mark Windecker
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12/12/07
© Andrew S. Hartwell
Fans of Matt Connolly Motorsports (MCM Racing) know about the cars and the drivers who have raced under that banner. But one member of that team who toiled behind the scenes with MCM has decided the time to start his own team is now. We refer to John Vincent; an engineer with a family history in sportscar racing that was interrupted for nearly a decade, and then resurrected with MCM.
Vincent grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of John Vincent Sr., the owner of a successful Porsche-Audi repair shop. Young Vincent spent many hours both in the shop working on cars, and at the race track, assisting his father with race prep work.
After 1992, Vincent left racing to take up his trade as an engineer. In 2002, his return to racing would be expedited by a chance encounter with a neighbor. And now, six years later, Vincent has decided to make racing his full time vocation.
We talked with John Vincent this week and he told us of his history in and out of the sport, how he came to get back in, and how he plans to go racing full time in the ST Class of the KONI Challenge Series, running his team as a business of his own.
And then he told us about the parallel between him, his son, and the Mercedes monkeys.
But let us start at the beginning, just as is done in every race.
I grew up in racing, working at my dad's Porsche-Audi repair shop in St. Louis Missouri. Back then we were involved in SCCA club racing. My dad - his name is John Sr. - prepped a Porsche 356 for John O'steen. My dad was kind of in charge of the team, but unlike today when you have good sized crews, back then you had my dad and John and maybe one or two guys helping out. That was it. I think I really got started in racing when I was around 5 years old. Back in the 1970's I remember being at the SCCA runoffs. I just kind of grew up around racing. I didn't really know any different at that point. I was like most people who do something for years and become more and more involved in it.
Over the years I was simply learning the business. While most other kids were playing baseball and other sports I was always working on cars. Dad had a good business going and when you think about what the cheapest kind of labor you can have might be, how can you beat having your own kid as a mechanic?
I was doing tune ups when I was just eight or nine years old. I remember the first time - I was 14 - that my dad took an engine apart and then said to me, OK, now you figure out how to put it all back together. Order the parts and do the whole kit and caboodle.' And I did!
We did club racing for a long time, then we moved to showroom stock, when that was popular in the 80's. Around 1985 we moved into SCCA Showroom Stock Racing. We worked with Bruce Frenzel who bought a Porsche 944 turbo. Since no one had worked with that car in racing yet, and since we worked with Porsche cars all the time, we said we would give it a shot.
We did that for a few years before moving over to a team called Kelly-Moss Racing. They started running Porsche 944S2s in FireHawk, but they were really in racing just for fun. Eventually the guy who owned the team decided he wanted to do well and he so he contacted Porsche and they referred him to us.
It was around this time that my role had become doing most of the racing prep work. We were underdogs with that car as the Pontiacs and Chevy's were being supported by the factories but Porsche didn't really care about a minor series like FireHawk. But we kept working on the cars until we got to the end of the season and we later approached IMSA about setting up an IMSA approved racer we called the 944 S2 Club Sport. We got the car approved at Sebring and debuted it at the following race at Road Atlanta, and we won with it. But we did have a special model 944 available for people to race. Our car was built to be a more competitive version of the stock 944 and once we had it a
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