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cameraman
01-05-06, 01:10 PM
They are selling a ride in the pro/celebrity race on eBay.

Link (http://www.champcarworldseries.com/News/Article.asp?ID=9904)


Starting January 16, 2006 a spot on the starting grid for the 30th Anniversary Toyota Pro/Celebrity Race - part of the April 7-9, 32nd Annual Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach - will be up for bid on eBay, with bidding scheduled to run through January 26. All proceeds from the auction will go to the Grand Prix Foundation of Long Beach, which, since its inception in 1991, has donated more than $1.8 million to Southern California charities.

e-bay auction link (http://cgi3.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=toyota_grand_prix-by-kompolt)
TravelGal
01-05-06, 02:25 PM
They have always auctioned off one ride. Either they decided this was the most effective way to auction or there will be two.
cameraman
01-05-06, 02:53 PM
Champ Car marketing, what a novel concept.
Robstar
01-05-06, 09:49 PM
That would be awesome... :drool:
theunions
02-03-06, 02:39 AM
Aye carumba, I know the winner!!! :eek:
TravelGal
02-03-06, 08:05 PM
Aye carumba, I know the winner!!! :eek:

Cool! Did you see that he sniped in at 6 seconds prior to the close? Said he's never been on E-Bay before but it takes striker software (or some name like that) or some darn good "luck" to nip in right at the end. I wonder who THOUGHT they had it? Must have been a huge downer for them.

So, unions, can this guy drive, or be taught to drive?
Ankf00
02-03-06, 09:30 PM
e-snipe, free trials...

s'all you need ;)
theunions
02-04-06, 03:02 AM
Cool! Did you see that he sniped in at 6 seconds prior to the close? Said he's never been on E-Bay before but it takes striker software (or some name like that) or some darn good "luck" to nip in right at the end. I wonder who THOUGHT they had it? Must have been a huge downer for them.

So, unions, can this guy drive, or be taught to drive?

I'm not convinced the eBay sentence in that PR is accurate, because I KNOW the subsequent sentence about him having "never turned some hot laps behind the wheel of a race car" is completely false. When he returned to Japan after high school, he ran his own Ferrari for several years in a national Ferrari Challenge-type amateur series. In other words, even though he's been inactive for a few years, and even after the Willow Springs tests, he may well be better prepared than all the other "celebrities" combined. Seriously.

I know this because we've been friends since high school (where there weren't exactly a ton of people to discuss racing with), and he was in fact the first person I ever built a commissioned model kit for - a box stock Monogram Al Jr. Valvoline March 88C (which he still claims to have) - back in the days when I did box stock.
theunions
02-21-06, 11:51 PM
I shot a 15-minute interview with Thom this Sunday, for future consumption. I'm not the first though, as KNBC in LA ran a 45-second segment on him during Thursday's evening telecast, in which he took his car to the Tonight Show lot in Burbank.

I loved it when he said, present tense, "I like CART, obviously." :D