Hold the tea and crumpets: from monster trucks to the gentlemanly sport of road racing ‒ Performance Unlimited’s Denny Norton excels

Most people in the area know Denny Norton as the owner of Performance Unlimited, the auto repair shop at 5415 Austin Court, Ringwood, that keeps their cars safely on the roads. A few years back, however, it was just as common to see Norton behind the wheel of a stock car or monster truck. Norton made a name for himself as a competitive driver in the region.

April 23 and 24, Norton returned to competitive driving, though in a less familiar arena – road racing.

Merry Men is a name that conjures visions of robust men with long bows and English accents wearing green tights. For Norton’s return to racing, it represented the name of a team of racers, including Wayne Seely, Mike Recine, Ken Girard and Dave Johnson, who were racing for fun and to raise funds for Japanese Tsunami relief. Norton said that, while he enjoyed the more gentlemanly sport of road racing, he was just fine skipping the tights.

“I was surprised the way some of the other drivers would politely move out of your way,” Norton said of his first experience road racing. “With monster trucks and stock cars, it’s a bit more aggressive than that.”

Norton said he’s comfortable hugging someone else’s bumper while going through turns at (???) mph. He said he’s also comfortable driving in heavy traffic with other drivers who aren’t afraid to fight for the lead.

Though, during the road race, if he tried to slide into another car’s slip stream, the other driver would inevitably, and with a very proper air of ‘sorry old chap’ civility, move aside, that’s not to say the event wasn’t competitive. In fact, Norton said it took him a couple laps to shake off the rust from several years’ absence from competitive racing. Still, the Merry Men finished 16^th overall out of 65 cars, and ninth in their class.

Finishing at all was the key. Seely said the event was part of the ’24 Hours of Lemons’ nationwide endurance races to prevent gingivitis. He said the group raised $960 to donate to the Red Cross to help survivors of the March 11 Tsunami that slammed into the northeast coast of Japan.

“I’m still soliciting,” Seely said. “I want to get over $1,000.”

Seely, who Norton described as a strong and experienced road-racing driver, said that Norton definitely enjoyed the event at Gingerman Raceway in South Haven, MI.

“He (Norton) had so much fun he said he’s thinking about building his own car for next year’s Lemon Race,” Seely said.

This year, the team of five took turns behind the wheel of a rented 1969 Alfa Bellini.

“It was an ugly car – oh yeah,” said Norton. “But, it handled well.”

The race was slowed a bit on Saturday, April 23, when the track was peppered by rain and snow. Seely said he’s used to racing in wet conditions. On the other hand, he said Norton probably didn’t have much chance to race in the snow or rain as stock car and monster truck competitions were shut down when the weather turned sour.

“We tried using Rain-X every time we came into the pits,” Seely said of the wet track that sprayed a mix of water, residue of rubber and grease onto the windshields. “It helped at first but, after two laps, it would be just grease again.”

He said that, in those conditions, the best you can do is to follow the other guy’s taillights.

By Sunday, the rain and snow had cleared up.

“Once Denny got on the dry track, he was in his element,” Seely said. “He was just flying through the turns.”

Seely said his top lap time was one-minute, 50 seconds. Norton beat that time by one second.

“Once he (Norton) got himself acclimated to that environment, he picked it up real quick,” Seely said.

Seely said the team ran 326 laps and finished the race. Norton said about 20 percent of the cars didn’t finish.

“I ran that car hard,” Norton said. “It was fun. You couldn’t have wiped that smile off of my face if you had tried.”

Is your antifreeze safe from freezing this Richmond winter

You still have time to have it checked Well, there’s no denying it – winter tends to get chilly here in Richmond. We have to deal with snow and ice on the roads, scraping the same off our windows and windshield, and staying warm while we drive. Of course, you had your antifreeze checked before winter rolled into town. What?! You didn’t have your antifreeze checked before winter clamped down on Richmond? So, how’s your antifreeze doing? If you haven’t had it checked, there’s really no way of knowing, is there? This car has overheated in the middle of a Richmond winter. But, on the other end of the spectrum, the antifreeze can also freeze if it's not up to its job. Hopefully, you haven’t had a serious problem with your antifreeze already. If you did, you’d probably know. When antifreeze fails, it’s a potentially catastrophic condition for your vehicle’s engine. You could have hoses that have burst because of freezing antifreeze. Worse than that, your engine block may have crac...

Blocks of ice falling from cars in McHenry could cause accidents or damage

We’ve all seen those blocks of snow falling from behind the rear tires of a car when the snow rolls into McHenry . Fortunately, they’re just packed snow that will disintegrate under your vehicle’s tires as you simply drive right through them, right? Don’t count on it. Those blocks of snow are often packed so tight, condensed by the thaw-and-freeze cycle, that they’re anything but oversized snowballs . They’re often more like boulders. Hit one of those blocks and the collision between the block and one of your tires could send you careening off the road or into oncoming traffic. In some cases, they’re so solid you could pound them with a sledgehammer with little effect. They truly can represent a serious road hazard. The problem is that it’s difficult to tell how solidly they’re packed when you see them on the road, left their unwittingly by another driver. Either way, your best bet is to try to avoid them. But you want to be careful dodging blocks of ice in the road, too. You need...

October 20 Hootenanny will benefit veterans with PTSD

Been to a Hootenanny lately? When you read that question did you ask, “What?” Well, if you have gone to a Hootenanny in a while, or if you don’t know what a hootenanny is, we have an event for Oct. 20 that will clear up either question. From 6 p.m. to Midnight, Saturday, Oct. 20, MC3, the McHenry Area Chamber of Commerce business networking group, is helping to host an inaugural Veterans R&R Wild Horse Hootenanny at Beyond Stable Farm (11129 Rte. 176, Woodstock). The event will benefit Veterans R&R Operation Wild Horse. Operation Wild Horse serves veterans with PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). Working with the horses has proven to have an incredibly calming effect on the veterans. And, it’s good for the horses, too, rescued wild mustangs. This means that the hootenanny is for a very good cause. But, it’s also a lot of fun. So, what is a hootenanny? According to a Google search, a hootenanny is “an informal gathering with folk music and sometimes dancing.” The V...

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