Photo Courtesy of Gary Faules

Faules won the Mexican Grand Prix, despite losing his brakes during the race.




Faules races into upper echelons of auto sport

By Kelly Wilkinson

There was a moment when Gary Faules' brakes went out during one of the races at the Mexican Grand Prix, and it briefly occurred to him that he might be a goner. Never did it occur to him that he might win the contest.

"My intent was to say that I raced in a Grand Prix," Faules says with a chuckle and downward look. "I wanted to get back from one and tell people on a Monday that I had raced a Grand Prix that weekend."

Faules raced in the Mexican Grand Prix in Tijuana March 12-14, and after a series of five 30-minute races in the pro-sedan two (PS2) category, he won the title.

"When I was little, I can vividly remember sitting in a friend's father's Corvette and making the sounds," he says, a rough acceleration noise emerging from his throat. His left hand rested on an imaginary steering wheel and the other wildly grabbed the air, shifting pretend gears.

"I grew up in the muscle-car era and was just a normal guy," he continues. "On TV, all the race-car drivers were bigger than life to me. I idolized their ability and skill."

With this title, he has now joined those ranks.

And it didn't come so easily.

In car races that last over several days, such as the Grand Prix, a driver's time for one race determines his placement for the following race. In Faules' case, this meant that he started the second race in second place because he turned in the second fastest time in the first race. But then things got a bit more tricky.

In the next race, a driver hit him going over 100 miles an hour, and after spinning out and getting his car back on the track, Faules finished 14th.

He takes the crash in stride, saying, "that's part of the fun of it, getting back on the horse, so to speak."

Then in the following race, he made up enough time to finish sixth, and it was from this sixth-place position that he won the entire race without any brakes.

"A big part of going fast is having the ability to stop as quick as you can," he says, adding that he had to "pitch his car sideways" to stop at the end of the race.

"It was real exciting," he says, grinning. "I can't believe it actually happened."

Faules owns California's Best, a car repair shop on Evelyn Avenue that smells like new tires and has squeaky floors and walls filled with racing pictures. He started racing with a competitive license--required for all professional races--last August after taking classes with the National Auto Sports Association (NASA) in Richmond. While he was there, he won an award for displaying the most outstanding effort out of the more than 600 drivers. Then, he started racing the next week.

Faules has now put together a PS2 racing team of his own under the banner of California's Best, and is sponsoring a series of pro-sedan races with NASA.

"They're such a great group of people," he says of the NASA school. "And this is a way to give something back."

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