A CONVERSATION WITH DAVE ROSENBLUM

What started you racing?

As a boy, always having to work in a family business after school and weekends, I didn’t really become proficient at any of the ball sports. The result of that, making money and having an attraction to cars at an early age, was probably the main thing. It was just a natural attraction. And then just working in the store and saving money for a car.

Was there any one thing that made you interested in cars?

When I was little, I somehow took some books out of the library – stock car racing and all these kind of books. (I still have them in the house. I never returned them to the library.) At the age of 11, I started reading stuff like that. And I started paying attention to it. And basically having a love for British sports cars at an early age – that’s basically how it started.

And that would be back in the ’60s?

I started having an attraction for cars in the early ’60s, maybe even late ’50s.

And then, in high school, I sort of gravitated to the guys who liked cars. We were the more serious guys that used to spend our Friday nights looking for winding roads, driving our parents’ cars, and nearly killing ourselves.

In college, I bought my first sports car – a TR250. Prior to that, I had a couple of used sports cars – a TR3, some Mini Coopers, and a whole assortment of cars. But my first, brand-new, real sports car was a Triumph TR250. Within six months I had an extra set of wheels and some Goodyear Blue Streak racing tires and started autocrossing.

And then I won the Delaware Valley championship somewhere around ’67 and ’68 – constantly doing autocrossing.

Then my parents gave me a college graduation present – they sent me to Israel for the summer. I traded in my airplane ticket – without their permission – and spent four and a half weeks at the Henry Morrogh driving school in Monza, Italy, living at the track, camping out, and learning how to drive Formula Fords. And I became pretty good at that.

And then, when I came back, I ended up working a little bit in the family business and saved up some money and bought Dick Stockton’s Datsun 510. In those days, it was IMSA, and it was a Baby Grand car. I ran that in a couple of races. I just didn’t have the expertise or the money to run. So I ended up selling it, and then started racing showroom stock.

By that time, one of the first races was here at Lime Rock at the second-ever Car and Driver Showroom Stock Challenge. And I had an Opel. Right at the end of college – that’s when racing started getting serious.

I always had an attraction to cars, always played with go-karts, and went autocrossing.

What was the hardest lesson you had to learn about racing?

The hardest thing about racing is not the car stuff. It’s learning how to manage the sponsorship end. That’s the difficulty.

When you have a little bit of talent and have an attraction to it, you can practice and practice and get better. But if you don’t have the money to go practice, you can’t do it. Racing is one of those sports where you need some financial backing.

That’s the hardest thing.

From the driving point of view, it’s learning how to concentrate, learning how to talk yourself into “smoother is faster, and what feels faster is slower.” Even after 40 years, the real smooth, nice laps that are really quick feel like, “OK, I can go quicker.” And then when you go quicker, you end up going slower because you make mistakes — not mistakes. You scrub off speed, or you’re just doing little things. Those are probably the biggest lessons that you have to learn.

How long did it take you to learn it?

I’m still learning.

Do you ever feel yourself getting carried away? Do all drivers do that?

You go out there, and you think you have a really smoking lap going, and you look at your lap time, and it’s decent. You go, “Oh, I know what I can do to go faster.” And you figure you’re going to go burn the next one, and sure enough, you do something that slows you down a little bit, and then you can’t figure out why.

Smooth is fast, and fast is sometimes slow. Those are the key things that I have to worry about and work at.

Who was your racing hero? Did you have one?

There were always guys. Through each couple years there’s a great racing driver you always gravitate to. I liked Mark Donahue; I thought he was fantastic. Gilles Villeneuve was fantastic to watch; Ayrton Senna was fantastic to watch.

My buddy Davy Jones was always somebody I looked at, even though he’s younger and he’s a good friend. His career just mushroomed. I always looked at guys like that.

Is there one set hero I really liked? I liked Dale Earnhardt because of his attitude – that swagger that he had, that cockiness. I liked that. He was the man.

Do you know how many races you’ve run?

Hundreds. Too many to remember.

OK, what would you say was your most memorable race?

Probably winning Watkins Glen, the 24-hour, in a Volkswagen. That was pretty memorable. That was a real neat race.

How long ago was that?

Twenty years ago.

It’s not so much which race was the best. In my position, it was winning a Manufacturers’ Championship in World Challenge for Saturn^®. That was real terrific – helping Volkswagen win their Manufacturers’ Championship the year we won the 24-hours.

One of the more memorable races was my first pro win at West Palm Beach in a Firehawk race. That was probably five years after I got out of rehab. I had spent the years from 17 to 34 being a “pharmaceutical major” and never, ever succeeding at anything because of the addiction at that time, and then I got sober and everything started going good for me. One of the things that was hard to accept was that I could be successful at something where I had 17 years of reinforced “Nothing ever works out.” So I think the first win on a professional stage was a memorable moment. I broke the ice. I can do this. That was a turnaround moment.

There have always been great races. Getting a podium finish in a Saturn that was definitely out-gunned. That was a good moment. Having Davy Jones as a teammate at Laguna Seca a couple of years ago where I gave him the car in first place and we had real good, solid ending – that was a fun race. Another was when Kristian [Skavnes] and I ran at Laguna in a Firehawk race, and he and I won. There have been moments.

But all in all, I feel very, very lucky that at the age of 59, going to be 60, I still feel I’m fairly competitive and I’m healthy, and I’m still able to do this.

How much longer do you think you can race?

The Man upstairs has been pretty good to me health-wise. There’s a lot of good drivers who are doing it in their mid-60s. Elliott Forbes-Robinson races Daytona prototypes, and there aren’t many guys better than him.

Yeah, I’m starting to peak. The end is coming soon. I figure I can do this at this level another three or four years.

What makes you keep racing?

There are lots of things. One is being able to compete with young, good, fast drivers – that’s a perk in itself.

Another thing I enjoy is the feeling of going out there, driving the car as fast as I can, putting it on the limit – that feeling of excitement. That rush. Coming down the hill here at Lime Rock where the car is teetering at the edge of control, and you know that you might just drop a wheel off into the dirt. You do that, and it gets hairy. And constantly doing that lap after lap, having that concentration, and being able to just do it and do it and do it. That’s what keeps me going. Our Subaru cars give me the confidence to push my limits. There aren’t too many other things that give me that kind of feeling.

It’s just fun being able to play a game or a sport where you can play it right at the limit and know you can do it and have control over it. It’s like when I ride my motorcycle, I know that I can’t do what Valentino Rossi does and drop knees in the turns and hang on. I just can’t do that. I don’t know how. But I do like riding. So I keep riding to a certain level.

But with a car, I can play the little games that you can play with it. As long as I still like it, I want to keep doing it.

The problem is as you get older and running a team, it’s harder to wear a helmet and a couple other hats. That makes it a little bit tougher for me. I’ve always been a team owner and driver. There’s more distractions that you have to put to the side than the guy that comes out and races. They don’t have to worry about who stays in what hotel, what everybody wants for dinner, who’s getting the airplane tickets, who’s booking the hotels, who’s paying the entry fees. There’s about 90 million things going on that I have to take care of.

I have a wonderful relationship with an excellent partner – Joe Aquilante of Phoenix Performance. Joe’s expertise and the history that he has is absolutely one of the best in amateur SCCA sports car racing in the United States. And during his pro career, when he ran Firehawk, he also had countless wins. Having him as a partner does take some of the burden off my shoulders.

But to run a team is even sometimes too great for Joe and myself – where you really need more people underneath you. I feel very fortunate. We have a very young team, with Klevis, Jason, and Matt. They’re into it; they’re Subaru guys; they love the car; they’re motivated. They’re that different type of young kid that understands electronics and has a passion for the cars. And they know what to do with them. So having that as a team helps. Still, you have to guide them, you have to make sure that they do things right. They’re better mechanics than me any day of the week. I’m not a mechanic.

But sometimes young people have blinders – you know, they see one thing; they don’t see the other thing. Being a team owner, you have to look in a couple different directions to figure out things. And then sometimes you have to be a real pain in the butt, where you have to ask 10 times to make sure something gets done. And you want it done the way you want it, not the way they want it.

When you take all that, you’ve dispersed a lot of energy that would have been a lot better off not used until you get in the car. It’s a little harder for me.

I have the type of personality that if you don’t know me, the first impression might be the wrong thing – the way I am, because I’m pretty straightforward. I don’t hold anything back. Sometimes I tend to cause more work for myself than is necessary. That’s a big learning thing, but I’m still trying to learn because I still tend to make mistakes.

One of the hardest things about my personality is that when I become passionate about something, I go full tilt and I say it like it is, the way I see it.

I’ve really become a Subaru advocate. In my house, my wife drives a Tribeca, my daughter drives an Impreza, and I have the STI. I’m a believer in the product. We could afford to buy other things if we wanted to. I think sometimes where you’re passionate about the sport you like, and then you’ve got the car that fits into the sport that you’re passionate about – sometimes the enthusiasm that I develop is too great for people that I’m around.

And I really mean that. I get very enthusiastic. I get very passionate. And for some people, I’m sometimes hard to take that way.

And I try to treat my racing that way. I’m passionate about it; I’m excited about it. Some days it’s hard to motivate people, and some days your motivation tends to piss people off.

The hard part about racing is that when you get to the level where I’m at with the team, it’s a lifestyle. Everything’s related around it. And you have to have a good family that supports it. Luckily, my wife puts up with all that my career puts us through. I’m able to support myself from my other family business.

The difference between Joe and me as team owners is that we don’t depend on this for our living. So we’ll spend a little extra money that somebody else would put in their pockets. We’ll throw it back in.

There are some days when I say to myself, “You’re going to be 60. You like to ski. You like to fish. You ride motorcycles. Why do you need this aggravation? Maybe you’re better off just buying a track car and going track-day racing.”

But I still haven’t gotten it out of my blood – to be here amongst my peers in a professional arena. I don’t know if I can – to exit out of this whole thing. It’s just tough.

What’s your favorite track?

I love Watkins Glen. I love Daytona^® – the banks. Daytona is awesome. The Glen is just a great high-speed fun place.

I love Road America. We haven’t raced there in years. Laguna Seca is one of my favorites. For smaller tracks, I love Lime Rock. I love Barber. There are a lot of places. VIR is good.

But Watkins Glen and Daytona are probably the places that pump me up a little.

How did you come to partner with Subaru?

In years past, I’ve always had relationships with factories – Volkswagen in Detroit, Mitsubishi out of California, then Saturn. The Volkswagen program ended because of the Lockerbie [Scotland] airplane crash that killed their executives. The Germans came over and terminated racing. So I had all this equipment and a good team, and I was racing in the Firehawk series. The Firestone people liked me, and they hooked me up with Saturn, because Firestone was an OEM supplier to Saturn. And I started racing Saturns.

But I always said to myself, “Wouldn’t it be nice to live near the manufacturer where I don’t have to hop on an airplane and go to California or Detroit.” And I knew that Subaru was right across the river. It turns out that a friend who used to work with Saturn was at Subaru. He kept talking to me about Subaru. Subaru wasn’t really on my radar at that point. I thought it was just a snow car. I didn’t pay much attention to it.

Then the WRX thing started getting stronger in 2003, 2004. And I started watching it, and my friend kept talking to me. Then, finally, when James Han became the motorsports manager, through tenaciousness of me calling him all the time and my friend making a couple phone calls here and there, I went and talked to James.

I had a pretty good history with ICY Racing with the Inner City Youth program. But I needed something – Saturn didn’t care if I won or didn’t win. They wanted a warm, fuzzy program that was a community service program. It was more a pr program.

Subaru wants to win, and they have a winning product. To do that, I needed to come up with a little more credibility than some of the things that I had accomplished until then. So by partnering with Joe – that was the icing and candles and all the other stuff – put the deal together.

What we did the first year was try club racing. But the car [WRX STi] was misclassified. So we put together a proposal to James saying, “Get us an STi or help us with it, and we’ll go and race it and lose and put a name driver in the car, because the car will lose to Corvettes. We’ll get the car reclassified.”

So that’s what we did. We spent a year. We even won a race, because all the Corvettes broke. There was a race with five cars. Four Corvettes broke, and we won. But at the Runoffs, we got creamed.

As a result of that and through Joe’s relationship with the SCCA, we got the car put into the right class. Then James gave us the budget to run a three-car team.

So my choices were Kristian Skavnes – great driver – Chuck Hemmingson – great driver – and between Chuck and Klevis and stuff like that, we were able to win two championships the following two years [2005 and 2006]. We finished one, two, and six. I finished 6th. They finished one and two.

We played with the station wagon. We won a podium.

That’s how I got to Subaru, and it’s been a great adventure since then. When you can race a car that every young kid that goes to my daughter’s high school would give their left arm for, or you race the “cool” car, that’s a better ego trip than having enough money to race a Porsche or BMW. Those kind of cars you have to have money to race and the ego goes with that.

Here I have a car that’s a little more affordable, but every kid in America wants it. And since I’m a kid at heart, I love the car.

If there’s anything you’d want people to know about Dave Rosenblum, what would it be?

Don’t judge him right away. Get to know him.

I’m real passionate about what I do. And I’m a car person from head to toe. It’s an addiction that I can’t get rid of. I haven’t found a 12-step program or rehab for coming of age.

If you don’t know me, I’m hard to read. I’m hard to understand. And every once in awhile something comes out of my mouth that doesn’t mean to come out. It’s not meant in a negative manner. I think I’m colorful, and sometimes I need to keep the colors from flying so high.

I’m a pretty good race driver – still good enough to hang in there with the guys on the team.

And I have the business savvy to put together a good program that when you line yourself up with the right people you can constantly put together a program that’s going to be a winner. That’s the heart of it, the important thing.

Putting together winning programs is not easy. It’s not just the best driver and the best car. You can have the best driver and the best car, but if you don’t have the organization with it, it doesn’t mean anything. You’ve got to learn to put together the whole package. And that comes with years and years of experience.