Just like old times…but then again, not…

*** The human-interest angle newsletter introduction ***

It all started with a disease.  Or maybe we should call it a "condition" to be more sensitive to the infirmed.  No matter what you choose to call it, the fact that Mark has approximately 26 Saturns (I may be rounding up a little here) littered on and around his property speaks to the enormity of the situation.  It's a problem in any case, and fortunately not a problem that the rest of us need to deal with.  Except Cindy.  Bless her soul.  The big upshot of the condition (for everyone except Cindy, that is) is that Mark is always looking for an appropriate venue in which to enter a Saturn in some form of motorsport competition.  Be it road racing, ice racing, road rally, or the luge, if it's possible to squeeze a Saturn onto the entry grid, Mark's there.  It's just one of the many reasons we love him.

That said, Mark's latest fetish has revolved around a pair of road racing series that limit the value of the race car to $500 or less. Not surprisingly, that's not too hard to do when you are starting with a Saturn.  Or 26 Saturns.  The flip side, though, is that these races last between 7 and 24 hours in length which can be a bit of a, ummm, challenge in a $500 piece of crap.  Think about that for a minute: racing for at least 7 hours in a car that cost less than one rear tire for my GT3 RS.  And that's before mounting and balancing.

The new owner of the #34 ITA Saturn, Jeff Lawton, absolutely destroyed the track record in qualifying at New Hampshire Motor Speedway during the August 23-24 weekend.  Unfortunately, it was not official because it wasn’t in a race.  Nevertheless, NO ITA car had ever before recorded such a time.  The old track record was a 1:15.7 by an NX2000 with 156 HP.  Jeff turned a 1:15.0 and had two other laps in that session that were below the 1:15.7.

Don't believe it?  Check out this video: