[b-man]

I scanned a few snapshots of the GTO racing at the track and thought I'd share them. Most of the shots were taken during the mid to late 90's when it was still a dedicated bracket race car and had most of its faded burgundy paint job still intact.

These pictures were taken at the now-defunct high-altitude (2700 ft.) Los Angeles County Raceway in Palmdale CA, where the air quality was always notoriously lousy at over 4000 ft. usually. I normally dialed in the car somewhere between 12.40 and 12.60 depending on the weather.

Best ET and MPH on one unusually nice 'air day' (2400 ft.) at LACR was 12.22 @ 109 MPH, the car ran between 12.22 and 12.29 all day. Best ever ET recorded was at the also now-defunct Carlsbad Raceway in Carlsbad CA - 12.055 @ 110.29 MPH on a warm August morning, in cooler weather I'm sure the high-11s would have been more than achievable. Carlsbad was much closer to sea level at 225 ft. elevation than LACR in Palmdale.

The GTO was a great low to no-maintenance race car with an old never rebuilt 8.6:1 1974 455 that ran on 92 and then later 91 octane unleaded. Oil and filter change once a year, a new pair of slicks about every 2-1/2 years and check the the ignition timing and dwell on the points every 5 years (never needed any adjustment). Never even looked at the spark plugs.

It was basically just a street car equipped with a set of slicks, a manual reverse-pattern transbraked TH400, drag shocks and a stripped-out interior to save weight.