Fast Relief : Vintage-Car Driver Relaxes, Reduces Stress at 100 mph

Though Mike Davis owns a multimillion-dollar computer integration company in Huntington Beach, he identifies more with Bill Elliott than Bill Gates.

Davis would rather spend time thinking about motors than modems, and fantasize about racing engines rather than search engines. His scarred helmet reminds him of the difference between a computer crash and a real one.

He is among the 400 drivers--not including another 200 go-kart drivers--competing Friday through Sunday at the Motor Trend Tustin Thunder historic road races at the Tustin Marine Corps Air Station.

“For those of us in our 40s where the knees don’t work like they used to, it’s an adrenaline rush,” Davis said of his racing pursuit. “This is a way to blow off steam and unwind the rubber band. For me, it’s a great way to get away from the office and relax.”

Like the other competitors, Davis is a member of the sanctioning Vintage Auto Racing Assn., which will showcase such sports cars as Ferraris, Lotuses, Lolas, Maseratis and Jaguars, as well as historic prewar sports and race cars, Formula Fords, Super Vees and Formula Atlantic cars, and production cars.

“There are two reasons I like the club,” Davis said. “They’re all motorheads like me, and it’s seamless--it goes from people who sleep in the back of a pickup truck who use bubble gum and bailing wire to hold their car together, to those who have 18-wheelers and have multiple cars.

“Everyone gets along real well--we’re there for the pleasure and the joys of the cars.”

The 2.2-mile road course in the shadows of Tustin’s hangars features races in 12 classes, highlighted by Sunday’s East vs. West Historic NASCAR Shootout.

Tustin is the eighth of 14 stops in the racing series.

In the featured event, Davis, 46, will race a 1992 Thunderbird which was driven by Winston Cup champion Alan Kulwicki, who died in a 1993 flying accident. The race cars of Richard Petty, Dale Jarrett, Rusty Wallace, Darrell Waltrip and Ernie Irvan are among Davis’ competition.

Davis will be busy, too, because he also leads the B Production class series, which includes vintage Corvettes, Cobras, Camaros and Mustangs--the muscle cars he loved while in high school in the late 1960s. Davis will race one of his two 1966 Shelby GT 350s.

Davis’ wife of 16 years, Sandy, will be racing the other Shelby in the B Production 1 class.

The difference? Mike’s car is stripped down with a 302 cc engine that generates about 480 horsepower. Sandy’s car is street legal and puts out about 400 horsepower.

The Vintage association is tough on recklessness, too. The first time a driver bumps another car, it results in probation, and the second warrants a 13-month suspension.

“A lot of people say that because we’re so tough on contact, it’s not real racing,” said Cris Vandagriff, the chief executive officer of the association. “I beg to differ.

“It’s nondiscriminatory. We’ve excused some of the biggest guys in our club, in terms of wealth. If someone’s being a bonehead, we don’t want them hurting someone else’s cars.”

The only prize for winning a race is the $2 checkered flag.

“Our goal is to stretch the legs of these antique cars,” Davis said. “We don’t want to bump fenders because some of these cars are extremely valuable.”

Cars range from the extremely valuable--one member was once offered $1.2 million for his 1966 427 Cobra SC--to those with less than a $10,000 investment. Davis, who pieced together a Porsche engine to drop into a 1961 Volkswagen Beetle he bought for $100 while in high school, built a replica 1966 Cobra convertible in 1993 with the intent of taking it to car shows.

Instead, he caught the racing bug and competed in Shelby American Automobile Club events (open track, no passing in the corners). Davis began racing in the Vintage series last year, and had a spectacular single-car crash at Tustin; he hit a tire barrier at about 100 mph, flipped the Cobra and slid on its roll bar with his helmet skidding across the pavement.

“I got a little overzealous,” Davis said. “I was trying to chase down a 332 Lola Frisbee, which I had no business trying to catch.

“They say your life passes before you and slows down [before death]. When I was upside down, even though it was 15 seconds of sliding and spinning and sparks, it felt like half an hour.”

He won the Chuck Tsigounis Perpetual Memory Award for racing courage and tenacity, though the flip probably cost him the rookie of the year award.

With Sandy in second place in BP1, the Davises turned a hobby into a family way of life. Their sons, Brandon, 12, and Sean, 11, tool around in go-karts.

But the Davis’ new baby is Kulwicki’s Thunderbird, which Davis bought six months ago, sight unseen, for $75,000.

Davis, born in Lynwood and an Orange County resident since 1977, had to have it.

This weekend will be only the second time Davis has driven the powerful machine. On a 12-turn, 2.52-mile course, while learning to drive the car, he drove three seconds faster than he had racing his Shelby at top speed.

“I took it to Sears Point [two weeks ago] and raced with the Shelby Auto Club to shake it down and it was awesome,” Davis said. “It scared me. It was absolute fantasy.”