So I took this new guy around and there happened to be a big race on that night. So he got to see everything; how it all unfolded. How they met up, how they bet the money, how the cops kept coming and we kept moving and one of most legitimate parts of the movie; where they meet in buildings before going out to race. We did that.
I began to see that it was really going to be a movie, that guy was for real. So I called and asked what's in it for me. They said the movie was going to shot here in New York and that I could be a consultant, technical advisor, help build some of the cars, etc. But the guy never gets back to me.
Then I'm in the theater and see a coming attraction clip of "The Fast & The Furious" so I call the guy and say, 'Hey, I see the movie is coming out and you never contacted me so I though it was all forgotten.' He said yeah I forgot to tell you it's actually on the way to the movies. So now I am kinda pissed because I am out of it.
He said he would invite me to the New York premier so I got to go and see it but also meet some of the studio people. I was introduced as the real guy the movie was based on. So after the movie I sat there for the whole credits, I saw the last line of that movie. I wasn't mentioned at all.
So I talked to the screenwriter and he says there is going to be a DVD with extra scenes and bonus material and the original story and some other items are in it. So at least the truth was out.
Drag Race Technology (DRT)DRT came about in 1996 when I started building my first Honda because I was reading Turbo magazine and seeing how things were blowing up with the Civics. I was building the car for a Drag Wars drag race at Atco. That was the first-ever big import event on the East Coast.
They handed out posters the year before and I had a friend who wanted to build a Honda so we hit it hard. We actually made it to the Atco event. What led to DRT was the attention I was getting while building and tuning the car. It was running 11.30s at the time, which was on par with the West Coast scene.
During that time I met Javier Ortega. He came around when I was building the Civic and it was he who pushed me to open up a shop. He was working with Drag Wars and Atco. This is well before he started working at Englishtown, and we went in it as partners.
The shop opened November 15, 1997. I'll never forget that date. It is also the day I stopped street racing because I knew I had a lot to lose. Needless to say the Fast & Furious thing spanned my street racing days and my legit drag racing efforts.
That first Honda was big but there was another important event in the early days of the shop.
During that era the Mitsubishi/Honda rivalry was heating up. We put on a match race between me in the Honda and Sean Glazar in his Extreme Motorsports Diamond Star. The place was packed and people still talk about it to this day. It was a night show and we had a lot of problems, Sean was red lighting. We were both running pretty much the same ETs so it was tight on the tree.
We have been lucky at DRT, we did not invest a lot of money and have never been stretched too far. The business has paid all its own expenses since day one. Thank God. You have to realize that 1997 was a great time to start a business like Drag Race Technology.
That was when all the hype about the California Honda scene was hitting out here thanks to Turbo magazine. Turbo was the only magazine to give the scene the respect it deserved and it showed the technical side of what was happening so people could see how the cars were able to go so fast and build their own. That was big. This was a time when grassroots guys drove the market and I can't tell you how many guys would show up with Turbo mag in their hands saying 'I want to do this.'