May 19-21, 2007
20th Anniversary of Silver State

First team effort of 2007 included Eliot Kushner driving and Lynn Rosa navigating in Eliot's beautiful blue '73 Pantera GT5 in the Grand Sport Division with a 125 Mph Class average goal. Jason Eaton and Nick Morland navigating in Jasons show winning '71 Pantera in Grand Touring Division with a 110 Mph Class average goal and Mad Dawg driving once again with no navigator in the Grand Sport Division with a 150 Mph Class average goal but I was able to tech for the higher 180 Mph tech or top speed since I had the added safety items on the Pantera that included a 6-point cage, fuel cell, fire suppression system, etc.

At the Saturday car show Jasons showing winning Pantera won the "Most Exotic" car award at the show. Considering the large turn-out of Ferrari's and Lamborghini's as well as Porsche's and the large number of Corvettes in attendence the award was quite a prestigous and surprising award. Not so surprising to Pantera owners but perhaps to everyone else in attendance. Jason's Pantera won 1st place in its 1st ORR event last year so this show award was the icing on the cake so to speak. Jason's Pantera is arguably one of the finest Pantera's anywhere. It includes many upgrades to the cooling and suspension as well as a a 408ci Cleveland stroker and his attention to detail is keeping more with a show car then a modified street Pantera but it is beautifully prepared and well maintained.

This was Eliot and Lynn's 6th Silver State open road race attempt. And they had finished every other ORR event they had attempted. Eliot's Pantera is basically a well built driver with some nice updated aftermarket wheels and tires, a carbon fiber decklid and feeding the engine with forced air through NACA side duct induction. Like 95% of the guys Pantera's Eliot's Pantera is just a well maintained good looking classic that is driven regularly.

I made two minor changes to my Pantera. We replaced the rubber side skirts and bottom of the airdam with ABS plastic after we noticed in photo's of the Pantera at speed that quite a bit of deflection espially to the bottom of the front air dam. The material on the bottom of the air dam and side skirts needed to be stiffer so we added ABS whichg is stiff, strong and would not crack but will grind off or self-sacrafice during the planned run. The rear double adjustable Aldan shocks were rebuilt with an added 25% rebound to deal with the dips or Woops at high speed (150-175 mph)on the course between miles 57 and 61 since I had hit the dips hard enough in September to crack the rear windshield! The dips have only got worse in the last 7 years since the road was last resurfaced so I not only planned to stiffen up the ride I also planned to slow down a bit in that section of the course. We also re-checked the alignment and made some minor changes to the suspension settings as well otherwise we made no other changes to the engine. I have to thank Dick Drenske for all his help and support again in setting up the Pantera.

On the morning of the race I was gridded 1st off the starting line with a Viper running 30 seconds behind me followed by 2 Corvette Z06's, a Ford GT 40 and another 7-8 Corvettes most of which were late model ZO6's. Weather conditions were near perfect. Little measurable wind at 8 am and temp was close to 70F. I got a great fish tailing start of the starting line and by mile 50 through the easiest sections of the course my average speed was closer to 160 then 150. My water and oil temps were again at all time record lows (180-210F) even running at the faster 170-175 top speeds and the engine felt and sounded great. I slowed down due to the road conditions I noted earlier (dips and then canyon road twisties) starting around mile 57 and by mile 80 I was back down around a 150 average. As I approached the finish line I speeded up again to 170-175 and my final 90 mile average ended up at 151.5 mph which for an all most old guy in a all most old Pantera I felt pretty good about <grin>....I wasn't even close to the goal speed to win any trophy and without a navigator I didn't really care. I was just feeling great that after two ORR's in a row that my otherwise street modified Pantera just seemed to be totally dialed in.

Running behind me back in the 125 class was Eliot and Lynn. Now I have to say again Eliot and Lynn have NEVER DNF'd before. Unfortunately a comedy of errors followed their start when their front trunk opened up at mile 6 and their bags in the front luggage area filled with wallets and cells phone catapaulted out the front trunk at about 150 mph!!

Wisely they stopped to retrieve their two bags. Doing so caused them to receive a DNF. As one of the rules of the event is once you stop for any reason you are not allowed to re-start your vehicle. So they found a comfortable place in the shade of a tree and got to get a ring side seat while the remainder of the cars drove past them until the road re-opened.

By the time Jason and Nick ran around an hour later in their run group winds had kicked up to 25 mph gusts but they were still able to easily maintain their goal speed of the 110 mph average. Jason had hoped to average 140 Mph but during the tech inspection on Saturday the tire inspector had determined Jason had worn his Hoosier R-6 race tires too much on the inside edges at the Vegas track event two weeks earlier so his goal speed was unfortunately reducedby Tech. He was not the only driver whose goal or tech speeds were reduced by Tire Tech. At least 2 or 3 others that had similar race tires or had worn street tires had their tech speeds reduced as well.

As a post script we were advised after Tech that due to a number of Hoosier and Goodyear race tire blowouts at speed that Tech was weary of anyone running race tires unless they had inner liners which are no longer manufactured. At this time if anyone is planning to bring Hoosier race tires to Silver State in the future they should either plan to bring 'new' Hoosier's or Hoosier's that have 'only'been heat cycled once and do not have any competition track time.

Due to the number of race tire blowouts Tech is concerned that unless you are running the afore mentioned Goodyear race tires with race inner-liners (difficult to find) you should strongly consider running a high performance tire on these 2-lane ORR events. Depending on your goal speed if you are planning to run an ORR in the future you would be advised to use a new or low mileage V, W, Y or Z speed rated high performance street tire under 3 years old you.

Tech's number one concern is safety and they have dramatically reduced blow-outs by taking a tough stand on any tires that are worn before they start the course. There's lots of good reasons for the harsher tire rules but the fact is race tires have had a higher rate of failure in these open road race events then street tires. I've been running Y (186 Mph) speed rated tires at the ORR events the last few years and have had no trouble with tire tech. If you plan to run race tires in the future keep two things in mind. One, is there is only one section of the course in the narrows or canyon road where your tires will get heated up enough to justify using race tires and secondly if you do hit any road debris or road kill your best odds of surviving a hard hit is always going to be with a good high performance street tire. This has been borne out by data the organizers have been collecting over the last 20 years.

In summary I expect we will see a larger Pantera turn out in September and a smaller turn out in other upcoming ORR events at the Bonneville 100, Pony Express, and the Nebraska Sandhills events between June and September. I hope some of you PI members will join us in the future. We have still yet to see a Mangusta or any other De Tomaso automobile complete an ORR in 20 years although 2 Mangusta's have tried in the past. None have made it so far. I'm betting after 20 years someone will make it happen soon.

Mad Dawg Antenucci
Team Pantera Racing