 Team owner Gil Mobley (left) and driver Richard Sexton are currently leading ORSCA’s 2007 Outlaw 10.5 points chase. Sexton started the year in the ’69 Camaro that his 23-year-old son Keith now steers for Mobley, but switched mid-season to a new 2006 GTO. |
Got Yer’ Goat!
Does this car redefine
Outlaw 10.5?
n only its fourth season, the Atlanta-based Outlaw Racing Street Car Association (ORSCA) has firmly established itself as the defining sanctioning body for Outlaw 10.5 racing. Though certainly impressive, that recognition also confers responsibility, not only for ORSCA’s own racers and operations, but for stewardship of the class as a whole. In other words, wither goes ORSCA, the rest will surely follow.
So, when a new ride from one of the country’s most-respected 10-wide teams makes the scene, people tend to take notice. Sanctioning body president and co-founder Johnny Fenn knows that all too well right now as he’s dealing with the impact of Gil Mobley’s new 2006 GTO on the class. Since making its ORSCA debut at Atlanta Dragway in May, Mobley’s new missile has qualified on top at two out of three events and almost always goes deep in eliminations with veteran driver Richard Sexton at the controls.
Not surprisingly, the bright, blue Goat, built by Vanishing Point Race Cars in Telford, PA, incorporates all the latest bells and whistles of modern racecar construction, based on a dual-framerail, 25.2-certified tube chassis and draped in a combination of factory sheetmetal and modified Pro Stock body panels. It makes for a very pretty piece.
So what’s not to love?
The most obvious answer is a one-piece nose that’s in blatant violation of ORSCA’s rule that all Outlaw 10.5 entries have a removeable hood separate from the front fenders.
“The problem is that when you have a car show up that looks out of whack, then you tell another guy that his wing’s two inches too long, his immediate response is, ‘What about that?’ We’re getting a lot of that kind of thing going on,” Fenn says. “Let me tell you something about racers, if you nail their butt, they’ll rat out their momma. They’ll tell everything they know about everybody else’s car; there’s not a lot of loyalty there when it comes to saving themselves.”
Look beneath the skin, though, and purists also find offence with the new GTO’s front shock tower and strut locations, suspension mounting points, firewall placement and most of all, its wheelbase being shifted forward some claim by as much as five or six inches.
Mobley has heard those cries of ‘Foul!’ but insists the car is legal.
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At Atlanta Dragway, car owner Gil Mobley demonstrates his new Outlaw 10.5 car’s body measurements fall within ORSCA’s published tolerances.