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Audi Presents Petit Le Mans

06/10/2001

Evil Eye Racing

First Timers In ALMS

Gary Schultheis heads up Evil Eye Racing. Their logo is a Skull and Crossbones and it is displayed right dead center on the hood of their yellow Porsche 911 GT3RS. It is a clean machine that looks fast sitting in the paddock. They can attribute that effect to the experienced Orbit Racing organization. “We race under the Orbit umbrella. They provide all the support for the car. I’m the owner of the 32 car.

The 2001 Petit marks the team’s first foray into the ALMS. “Prior to Grand Am, I ran some Porsche Supercup where we did some Motorola Cup as Schultheis Racing. We are pretty excited about this. It is our first ALMS race. We have done Grand Am and SCCA so this completes the cycle.

“We didn’t have that great of a season this year. But I think we showed we have the tenacity to keep coming back. One thing is sure; I have to thank my crew because they put this car back together twice this year.

“We had a wreck at the 24-hours of Daytona. The car was pretty much a throwaway. We had to get a new tub. We were 11.5 hours into the race and I lost some traction coming into turn one and had a very big collision with the wall. I came out on the back of the infield. I was able to climb out on my own and I was only in the hospital getting checked out for 15 minutes.

“When the new tub came in from Germany, it had some kind of bugs in the shipping container. They wouldn’t clear my car through customs until they got the agriculture department to go in and kill off whatever kind of bugs were in there. From start to finish, it took about 3 months.

“Our first race after the crash at Daytona was at Watkins Glen for the 6-hours. My co-driver Ross missed a shift going into the bus stop and once again the car went into the wall headfirst. We thought for sure we would need another new tub and that the Porsche guys would be very unhappy with us, but fortunately we didn’t need a tub and we were able to bring the car back for the next race at the Glen, where we finished 5th in class."

The name Evil Eye conjures up all sorts of reasonable explanations as to how the team came to choose that particular bit of identification. So it is only to be expected that Schultheis would be able to elaborate.

“I have a glare problem at night so I wear a yellow lens glass in my glasses. Well, they broke the day before I did an SCCA endurance race so we went to a local Wal-Mart and the only one they had was like an old ladies, secretarial type pair of glasses. I wore them but they were absolutely a fashion faux pas. The guys told me I looked like ‘the evil one’ or ‘evil eyes’. People didn’t know how to pronounce my name would just call me ‘Hey, evil eye!” Hence the name Evil Eye and our Jolly Roger logo with the evil yellow eye."

And a fine eye it is. Lets hope it helps the pair of Schultheis and Scooter Gabel see their way around the other cars when the sun sets on Road Atlanta. “And let me tell ya, with the TotalMotorSport decal on here, that has to be good for about 2 seconds a lap!”

But even a yellow eye can’t see how to answer this Schultheis dilemma. “One thing that is amazing to me is that there are only 4 Audis here and there are 11 turns, so mathematically I can’t figure out how I get passed by an Audi on every turn!"

Perhaps the German Navy wants to clear away the Pirates?