'Edge,
Fair and intelligent questions, and I'm happy to respond;
Delivery: No doubt about it, when the focus program really took off, we had a heck of a time keeping up for a while. The winter before the launch of the Indy region was the worst. Some things, like better (or ANY) communication with the sanctioning body would have helped but in the end, I have to take responsibility. We learned quickly from that experience and soon had distributors in place across the country (Washington, New England, Indianapolis, North Carolina). Unfortunately, the advent of the pavement car took care of our growth problem for us....
Cost:
Have to disagree with you here. The cost of the engine package went up by about $1000 over 7 years. That works out to about $140, or less than 2%, per year. I assure you, the cost of the aluminum that goes into the castings we make rose more than that. We did a good job of holding the line on engine cost. And reliability was excellent.
Turn around time on rebuilds:
Another good point. Although we have been pretty good regarding turn-around, there is always room for improvement. One of the ways I wanted to improve turn-around was through the network of distributors I had set up. Brownfield, Kenyon, Seymour and Briggs would have (and in some cases, did) carried long blocks and would have had the ability to perform basic service, had the program continued to grow. But, you can't keep a distributor in business on the car counts we have now. Thank you, pavement cars....
GM:
If GM goes under, this country has more things to worry about than Midget Racing. I'm just going to go along under the assumption that GM will continue as the worlds greatest auto manufacturer.
In many ways, the new program will benefit greatly from the lessons learned the first time around. First off, we will have a more controlled roll-out period with better communication between manufacturer and sanction. We will set up regional distributors to sell and service engines locally as the program spreads. And this time, THERE WON'T BE ANY DAMN PAVEMENT CARS!
Thank you for giving me the chance to address these issues. Please call if you have more questions.
Sincerely,
Keith Iaia
Revolution Racing Engines
805-467-3424
www.revolutionracingengines
"The Revolution Starts NOW"