On almost any other occasion, rolling a caravan of six Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution Xs up to Infineon Raceway would be almost as cool as it gets, but not for Will “Cheesecake” Roegge and myself. Let me explain a little bit. A couple of weeks ago, Moe Durand hit me up to see if Will Roegge and I could shoot a video for Mitsubishi that involved trekking six of these all-wheel drive turbo cars up to wine country Sonoma, California so they could drop them off at Jim Russell Racing School (Yeah, Robbie, I know you and Skip Barber are booing that right now. LOL). So far that does still sound pretty cool, doesn’t it? Well, the thing with shooting is that we don’t get to drive or even ride shotgun in the Evolution Xs. Those cars were reserved for the Mitsubishi forum dudes (Um. I guess that’s cool. No big secret that I’m not a huge fan of forums.) like Neil Chirico, Joseph Arruda, Benjamin Neuman, Dino Khoe, Michael Anders, and Jason MacGill. Will and I, well we were rolling up in a four-cylinder Outlander with me piloting while he hung out of the window thus giving him the whiteman frohawk look halfway up the 5 freeway.
Obscenely bright and early on Tuesday morning, which worked out well since I needed to move my car for street sweeping anyway, we met up at Mitsubishi headquarters in Cypress and got a quick rundown of what was going to be happening for the next six or seven hours. The main thing was that we would be stuck in traffic. Come on, hitting the freeways at 7am in Southern California is like a death wish, but we managed to creep along slowly while shooting video and trying to figure out how Billy Mays died and what they plan on doing with his beard.
Less than two hours into the drive, we had to make a premature pit stop because somebody needed a potty break already. Needless to say, all of the Evolutions lined up going anywhere brought tons of attention regardless of the fact that they were all stock. Unfortunately, the lady working at the gas station didn’t appreciate the engineering that went into these cars as much as everyone else and told us to get out of the parking lot. Back onto the 5 freeway for another few hours. Because we got a late start, which is amazing because Moe actually showed up on time, we had to skip eating breakfast at our next stop in ultra sexy Button Willow. I tried to avoid the three-hour old donuts, but I couldn’t. My stomach was grumbling and nothing could taste better at that moment than the combination of a donut and a small carton of orange juice, both warm from sitting in the car. Yummy. Rolling on the on ramp, Will tried to get a cool shot, but Mitsubishi’s Laura Arbios’ failed attempt at keeping all of the cars lined up and together made it for a less than dramatic video clip. Sorry, Laura, but I had to call you out on that one. LOL.
More crazy angles for Will while he tried to suction cup the Sony EX-1 to any flat surface on the Outlander. Oddly enough, the suction mount wouldn’t stick to the roof and Will was sticking his head out of the sunroof for quite some time trying to make it happen. Whiteman’s frohawk is back again. Our lunch stop was supposed to be at Wendy’s in Los Banos, but we ended up at Carl’s Jr. Damn. I was looking forward to square burgers too. Corrrect me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t “banos” mean bathroom in Spanish? Pretty fitting name for this city considering it smelled, looked, and felt like a bathroom at an old, rundown truck stop. Utilizing the small amount of time we had out of the cars, we grabbed quick interviews with Melvin Bautista, Christine “C Jew” Jew, and Moe Durand. C Jew is great because she just bought an Evolution 9 and got challenged to a race by Elliott Moran. Weight factor aside (C Jew = 100lbs, Elliott = 230lbs), it should be a pretty good race. They just need to bet big on it. I say loser has to tattoo “I <3 Los Banos” on their forehead. Moe was being Moe. I had to remind him to put on a Mitsubishi shirt because he was rocking a bright yellow Zankou Chicken one with some dolphin shorts. Reminds me of the days at Super Street when he’s go into meetings and round tables with his shirt buttoned up wrong and the collar folded in. Ah, the good old days.
While we continued our drive up north, it reminded me how crappy Central California was. Nothing but a lot of dirty and dead grass. Oh, and garlic.
It didn’t seem like it would happen, but we finally made it to Infineon Raceway where we were greeted by the Jim Russell staff. Head instructor Chip Pankow gave the group a quick tour of the future classroom, a breakdown of what the Lancer Evolution Experience was all about, and then told everyone to grab helmets for some hot laps with the instructors. Just before that, Moe busted out the Lancer Evolution Experience birthday cake.
Will and I went outside to shoot the stickered-up Evolutions next to the FJR50 racecar, which uses the infamous 4G63 motor. After grabbing some more clips and filling up on pizza and Mitsubishi cake, we decided that it was time to go for some hot laps.
If nothing else, the Jim Russell school does rock some pretty dope looking helmets and head socks. They looked like Snake Eyes from the old GI Joe cartoons. Wait, isn’t that movie coming out soon? I probably won’t get to see since I still haven’t gotten to watch The Hangover because it’s sold out by my house. I guess I could go in the daytime by myself, but then what kind of loser would that make me? Oh yeah. I’m jobless and sit around all day watching the NBA channel and writing complaint letters. I guess it can’t get any worse than that.
I’ve been to Infineon a couple of times for Super Lap Battle and Formula D, but I can’t recall if I’ve ever driven on the track. Will did last time with the Ford GT500 event, but that was nothing compared to this. I’m pretty sure Chip was driving, hard to tell with the helmet on, and he tore that track up in the black Evolution X MR. The class has both the MR and GSR Evos and we’re told in Super Sport mode, the MR will be faster. However, there are always people that want to go with the conventional five speed so that’s why they are there. Just some info on the Lancer Evolution Experience: it’s a one-day class that costs $1,000 and will start in August while early registration begins in July (this month). Not a bad deal if you have $1,000 and a day to spare. Most other classes out there cost a lot more and you don’t get to drive an Evolution X.
We had one more stop at Works Rally before we headed towards San Francisco and SFO where our hotel was. Fortunately, their facility was at the track so it didn’t involve more driving. Because so many people rolled up in the Evolutions that got left at the track, we had to cram everyone into the few Outlanders we had. Somehow, C Jew was the only one who jumped in our Outlander and I ended up driving down to San Francisco. Did I mention that I was really tired from waking up at 5am and driving the entire time? Driving always makes me sleepy for some reason. Someone should have penciled in a nap time somewhere in the schedule.
We finally checked into the Crowne Plaza and I noticed that I was in “murder central” – the last room on next to the emergency exit is called that because it’s an easy getaway for the killer. I saw that on an old episode of CSI (the OG one in Las Vegas, not the lame Miami or New York ones). I also noticed that I didn’t bring any moisturizer. Yes, I’ll wait while you make bodily fluid sexual references to me needing moisturizer for my face. For dinner, we headed out 20 heads deep to BJs where I pretty much put myself into a coma by consuming Crown Royal, clam chowder, meat loaf, chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, and some giant ice cream and cookie dessert thing. On the way back to the hotel (why was I still the one driving?) C Jew called me to tell me that she needed a bag out of the Outlander and they had to rush back to the hotel because Moe had to drop a deuce. Love
By midnight I was knocked out in my room and waiting for my 5am alarm clock and wake up call for the second morning in a row. Our fight was at 7am to Long Beach on Jet Blue. That would land us at around 8, at Mitsubishi by 8:30, and back home by 9 at the latest…or so we thought. Right when we checked in, it showed our flight was delayed for two hours. Wow, I think everyone could have used that extra two hours to sleep. And it’s not like you can just go back to sleep now that you already woke up. Just like you can’t force yourself to sleep at 9pm if you need to wake up at 5am. Though, how cool would that be if you could do both? I guess the flight wasn’t delayed because of the weather, but because the flight crew got in late last night and they get a specified amount of time off before they are allowed to work again. My goodness, I’ve never had a job like that. Everything we used to do was on a work now-sleep later basis. Their routine sounds pretty cush to me. Kind of like being a failure of an NBA coach like Mike Dunleavy who is also his own boss as the GM so he doesn’t have to fire himself. OK. Maybe it’s not exactly like that, but I had to throw that reference in there just because.
On the short, empty flight back we didn’t even get to enjoy the DirecTV because it kept freezing up so Will and I used the time to do some business planning. Will is going though all the footage right now and the video should be done by Mitsubishi Owner’s Day next Saturday. Speaking of which, does anyone want to hit Vegas on Sunday and Monday for some NBA Summer League action?
Ricky “RikDaddy” Chu
rikdaddy@rikdaddy.com
