EAST BRADFORD - If you ain’t bumping, you ain’t racing.
And Pat Onofrio of Bucks County did plenty of bumping Monday during a virtual 145 mph spin in rookie Reed Sorenson’s No. 41 Target ride.
The retired NASCAR Nextel Cup car -- shiny white with the big red Target store bull’s-eye logo on the hood -- was on display at the East Bradford Shops in conjunction with a ticket giveaway for Philadelphia country radio station WXTU’s concert to be held Saturday, 3 p.m., at the Tweeter Center in Camden, N.J.
Onofrio did most of his bumping with the track’s outer wall, not too much with NASCAR veterans Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. or Tony Stewart.
"It was fun but it was hard to get a feel for it," said Onofrio, who works in King of Prussia but drove to the strip center on North Bradford Avenue for the concert tickets. The center held the event to draw attention to its location, said Jean Back, of Survival Essential, who pulled it together.
Ron Dewees of New Garden took a "drive," too.
"I’ve been a (NASCAR) fan six or eight years," said Dewees, key account manager at the Pepsi Bottling Group in West Goshen. "I like the technology, I love the cars."
Dewees has never attended a NASCAR race but said he did get behind the wheel of a Richard Petty racing car at the Walt Disney World Speedway, a one-mile track in Orlando, Fla., where folks try their hand at NASCAR driving.
The No. 41 car was provided by Kramer International of Grand Rapids, Mich.
The company supplies retired NASCAR Nextel Cup stock cars converted to hydraulic-powered interactive simulators. The car’s motion control system and the fully functional original chassis allows the vehicle to lean in the corners, under braking and acceleration conditions. Smoke even comes from the tires.
In the car is a TV monitor so "drivers" can join a NASCAR race and go head to head with the pros. At East Bradford Shops, drivers joined in a NASCAR race at the Bristol Motor Speedway in Virginia.
The big difference: Kramer’s refitted cars have a driver’s working door so no one needs to climb through the window.
Cost to get a Kramer NASCAR car to your next event is $4,250, said a company spokesman in a phone interview from Grand Rapids.
Arron Collins, road manager for Kramer, has worked for the company for seven years driving a tractor-trailer, hauling the branded retired NASCAR cars some 500,000 miles over that time.
This week, Collins said he traveled from Grand Rapids to Rochester, N.Y., to East Bradford and will go to New York City.
"We travel coast-to-coast, corner to corner, major cities in Canada and once to Mexico City," Collins said. "We go anywhere and everywhere."
Don’t ask Collins about Sunday’s NASCAR race in Dover, Del. He was too busy to watch.
To contact staff writer Gretchen Metz, send an e-mail to gmetz@dailylocal.com. |
