Steve Jackson knows he can count on his friends in the stock car racing world to help him out of a jam.
For the past two-and-a-half years he's been trying to launch the Northern Outlaw 4s pro mini racing series in northern B.C. and this season got the green light from the Prince George Auto Racing Association to include the class on all six race weekends at PGARA Speedway.
Having already committed to race in Williams Lake as part of the WESCAR show May 28-29, the Outlaws weren't able to make the PGARA opener that weekend but they will be out in full force this Saturday as part of the Mr. Quick/White Spruce Enterprises WESCAR 100.
Jackson, a 46-year-old Prince George native, was looking forward to racing in his hometown for the first time with the Outlaw series but met with disaster in Williams Lake. He blew the brand-new engine he had installed this spring in his Silverado pickup, just two weeks before the Prince George race.
Sean Constantine, an Outlaw series racer in Victoria, learned of Jackson's situation and told him he could borrow his spare engine for as long as it took to get his own motor fixed. Jackson had the engine shipped to Prince George and worked on his truck last weekend.
He says he'll be ready to race Saturday along with one other Prince George driver, Mike Staniforth, and as many as eight other pro mini entries from Williams Lake, Quesnel, Fort St. John and Prince Rupert.
The Northern Outlaw 4s will share the spotlight with the WESCAR late-model series races as well as the PGARA street stocks, mini stock and hornet classes. Time trials are set to begin at 6 p.m., with racing at 7.
The Northern series has adopted the same rulebook that governs the pro mini classes at Western Speedway in Victoria and Thunder Mountain Raceway in Williams Lake. Racing tires, performance engine parts, exhaust headers and adjustable racing suspension slicks are allowed in the Outlaw 4s series. All those additions are forbidden in PGARA's mini stock class.
"We're the fastest four-cylinders around," said Jackson, the series president. "Around the province they're called pro minis. They compare to the WESCARs coming into town this weekend, except they're in a four-cylinder form. There's more adjustability to them, it's a really fast class. Our lap times should probably be faster than the street stocks. The fastest guys will be sub-18 seconds (about two seconds faster than the fastest mini stocks)."
Jackson's fibreglass truck body rests on the frame of a 1969 Datsun 510 car. The rules require the cars to weigh at least one pound for every cubic-centimetre of engine displacement. That means his car with its 2,100cc engine must weigh at least 2,100 pounds, with him in it. The Mustangs he races around the province have 2,400cc engines and while they have more horsepower, they pay a power-to-weight differential penalty, which makes Jackson's car more agile in comparison. The goal is to make the class friendly to all types of four-cylinder cars and end up with close results in races.
Combined results from the best two events of each driver at two events in Prince George and two in Williams Lake will be used to determine this year's Northern 4s points champion. Jackson is planning an invitational event next year in Prince George which he says will attract drivers from all over the province and Alberta. He's hoping to attend races this year in Quesnel, Agassiz, Edmonton and Yakima, Wash., site of a national pro stock event.
The cost of building a pro mini is comparable to getting a race-ready street stock - about $4,000 - but Jackson says the pro mini class will be easier on the pocketbook than the eight-cylinder class because drivers should be able to get through a full season on one set of tires.
He demonstrated the class last year at PGARA points meets, racing with the mini stocks. PGARA president Chris Arronge has watched pro mini racing in Williams Lake since he was a kid and he's convinced there's enough interest in Prince George to support a local series. On the opening race date at PGARA, May 28, just four mini stocks made it to the track, with six hornets and 11 street stocks. Arronge said the Outlaw 4s series has great potential to increase local car counts.
"There are a lot of mini stock guys who have been wanting to go faster and run racing tires and it sounds like, with what Steve's doing, we can get guys from out of town," said Arronge.
"It brings in more different types of cars. In mini stocks right now, the hot tickets are Sunfires and Cavaliers and if you're not running those you're not running out front. The Northern Outlaw deal levels the playing field where you can run any car as long as you can get enough horsepower to balance out your weight."
