Two decades ago, a young Jimmy Vasser earned a reputation for
tearing down local roads in a black
‘69 Chevy Camaro. On Sunday, Vasser will show off his driving
chops as a veteran Champ car driver on the streets of downtown San
Jose when he competes in the inaugural San Jose Grand Prix.
Two decades ago, a young Jimmy Vasser earned a reputation for tearing down local roads in a black ‘69 Chevy Camaro. On Sunday, Vasser will show off his driving chops as a veteran Champ car driver on the streets of downtown San Jose when he competes in the inaugural San Jose Grand Prix.
The race, which begins at 2pm, will be conducted on a temporary 1.4-mile circuit with a start and finish line in front of the Hilton San Jose & Towers on Almaden Boulevard in downtown San Jose. The race is the main event of a three-day series of racing events that began Friday and continues Saturday.
It’s not the first time Vasser has visited the Central Coast as a Champ car driver. For years, the 14-year auto racing veteran competed at Laguna Seca. But the Monterey-area road race has been replaced by the downtown San Jose street-racing event this year, part of a growing trend toward street racing in the Champ Car Series and other open-wheel racing series. The Live Oak alum said he is thrilled at the prospect of competing in front of thousands of fans, including hundreds of South Valley locals who will be out to root specifically for him, in the brand new race.
“I’ll miss Laguna Seca but the future of Champ Car Racing is on streets like these,” Vasser said as he surveyed the downtown race course last Friday. “Being a Bay Area guy myself, I’m really excited to show off Champ Car Racing to my friends and family, some of whom have never seen me race.”
Vasser, who is a part-owner of his third-year racing team – PKV Racing, said he’s hoping to make a big impression in the first-ever San Jose Grand Prix, and give his thus-far solid, if unspectacular, season a boost with a top performance in Sunday’s race. A win, he said, would also serve as a springboard for building PKV into a title contender.
“A victory for me is paramount here in San Jose,” Vasser said. “My focus is to build the PKV team up to a championship contender. We haven’t won a race yet (in 2005). We’ve been pretty consistent, but the goal this year is not to be consistently fifth. We want to win this race.”
Currently, Vasser and his No. 12 Gulfstream/PKV Racing Ford is sixth in the Champ Car standings after finishing 11th in Edmonton on July 17 in the most recent Series race. Teammate Cristiano da Matta will also compete, as will former Hollister resident A.J. Allmendinger, who now lives in Los Gatos and is just behind Vasser in the overall points standings in seventh.
Vasser said there will be plenty of challenges on the brand new course, especially because it will have race cars crossing railroad tracks for the first time in a Series event.
“At Laguna Seca, if you go off the track you hit the dirt and you can keep on going,” Vasser said. “If you go off the track here (in San Jose), you hit the barrier and your day is done.”
But the 39-year-old Vasser, who lived in Morgan Hill on Hill Street from 1980-89, said the best aspect of racing in San Jose is returning to his roots. Vasser and his family moved to Morgan Hill after spending about a year in Iran during a troubled time in that nation’s history in the late 1970s.
Already a three-time national champion quarter-midget racer as a youngster in the ’70s – he started racing when he was just 6 – Vasser returned to the racetrack when his family moved back to the United States when he was 15.
But while attending Live Oak High, most of Vasser’s racing exploits happened off the track, on the streets and back roads of Morgan Hill. In addition to the ’69 Camaro, a car that attracted more than its share of attention from his classmates and local police, Vasser said he used to cruise around Morgan Hill in a variety of cars from his father’s wholesale car dealership.
“I have great childhood memories of growing up in Morgan Hill,” Vasser said. “It’s a great community to live in. There are so many great roads there. Llagas, Chesbro, the road to Anderson Dam. I ran way too fast on those roads. There was nobody out there and you could just let it go. I picked up more than a few tickets in those days. We also had a few parties out at our house.
“I got to know the Morgan Hill police pretty well.”
A 1983 Live Oak grad, Vasser also played football for the Acorns and then-head coach Norm Dow. As a junior reserve defensive back he helped the Acorns to the 1982 section championship, then went on to start as a senior. Vasser remembers current Live Oak head coach Rick Booth as his defensive coordinator back then.
Vasser made some fast friends in Morgan Hill, Ted Ornduff and Rick Allen come to mind, some of whom still live locally. The racer said one of his biggest regrets was missing his 20-year class reunion a few years ago.
“I was racing and couldn’t make it,” he said. “I would have really loved to be there.”
After graduating from high school, Vasser attended the Jim Russell Driving School, then moved into the SCCA Formula Ford racing series.
In his first year, he won the North American Formula Ford Pro championship and Rookie of the Year honors. He won three championships in three seasons, starting a meteoric rise to racing prominence that included victories in the Formula Atlantic, SCCA Pro Sports 2000, Canadian Formula Ford 2000 and Toyota Atlantic racing series.
Since joining the Champ Car (then called Indy Car) racing circuit in 1992, Vasser has racked up 10 victories and 31 top-three podium finishes in the series, along with the 1996 overall points championship. He has finished in the Top 10 in points in seven of the last nine seasons.
Still fit in his late 30s at 5-foot-9, 155, Vasser also holds the record for most consecutive Champ Car starts – 204 – breaking the record previously held by Al Unser Jr.
Vasser is one of just seven drivers to win more than $11 million in Series competition, and ranks among the top drivers in history in a host of career Champ Car categories.
But Vasser’s career has been somewhat limited by the infamous CART-IRL break-up which kept the local product from racing in the Indianapolis 500 during his best years.
Vasser’s racing team, which is sponsored by Gulfstream, has a budget of more than $15 million for its two cars and 60 employees. His sponsorship deal also includes the use of a jet for race-related travel.
The teen terror of local roads now makes his home in Las Vegas. He and his family own a pair of auto dealerships in the Napa area.
