Electra Interviews: Steve Velazquez

Steve told me he got involved with PCA after he bought his first Porsche in 1989, it was a 944 Turbo. He said, "I wanted to learn how to drive the car so the people at Allan Johnson's where I bought the car suggested I join the PCA. I went and did a slalom event shortly after and was hooked from that point on. I raced at the stadium for about 4 or 5 years. The first 3 or 4 years with the 944 and then for a year or so with my 911 RS America. I sold the 944 Turbo to buy the RS America. I did time trails with PCA at the stadium, which was a lot of fun.

I did some trials with POC and my beautiful wife and I would take my black 944 Turbo and put a beach chair and an ice chest in the back of the car and drive to the track. At my first time trial at Willow Springs, it was probably about 110 degrees outside and we were sitting out in beach chairs.roasting. Then I realized I had to tape the lights and then I put numbers on the with shoe polish on the window and they said, "No, no. no….we don't allow shoe polish for numbers. You have to have numbers on the door and hood and they need to be a certain height". So I went and put duck tape on my beautiful car and when I went to take it off at the end of the day all of the glue stayed on the car. It was just a mess! I remember driving home and the brakes would be making all these vibrating noises and the wheels were probably flat spotted from a few spins and the car was shaking, rattling and rolling all the way home.

I realized that this was so much fun that I went to Skip Barber and did their school and then I did their racing series for a couple of years. I think it was 1992-1993, I won some races. I did 6 or 8 one year and then half a dozen the next year. It was tough because I wasn't in those cars all the time. I would go from the Porsche to the Formula and it was such a different kind of car to drive. It was a great experience.

Then the Club Racing started getting popular with the PCA, and I began doing those races. I was concerned about it at first because you have your streetcar and you take it out and run it door to door. It was so much fun because up until then all I had done was time trials. To experience the start of a race with everybody all grouped up, there's hardly anything more exciting in life. That's probably the thing that I thought was the most memorable, was my first start and I was doing it at that time with my daily transportation. For four years in a row I went to the PCA Road America Event, over Labor Day Weekend and that is probably the largest Porsche race in the country. Many of the years there were over 350 cars. It's just a beautiful racetrack and it was just cars from all over the country. It's 4.2-mile long track with three long, long straight-aways. The third year that I went in my RS America which was a well set-up car, Precision Motorworks in Anaheim did a great job and I was in some tough competition, I qualified third and with five laps to go I had moved up to second and I was right on the bumper of the lead car with two laps to go and when I passed him there was a yellow flag that got thrown out late and they said I passed under yellow. So they Black flagged me and took my "win" away. The next year I went to redeem myself and they impounded my car because they thought it was illegal. A bunch of my competitors protested. So the next day the PCA scrutineers went and looked over my car and checked the cam and all sorts of things. They had it for about three hours. I almost missed qualifying. They put it all back together and said, "Your car is perfectly fine". I was so upset and went out and beat my closest competitor by 2 seconds! I won the race the next day, which was nice.

I've only missed one race there and that was last year, luckily I didn't go because my daughter Brianna was born that weekend. All the guys at the race called me from the pits, to congratulate me, while I was at the hospital. It was pretty neat! That's the kind of friends you have in the Porsche Club.

I then did a couple of professional races with the Professional Sports Car Series. I drove a RSR at a couple of different races. I drove at the 24 hours of Daytona, we finished 14th in the race. That was Rick Ramist's 911 RSR. We had a mechanical breakdown and were out for an hour and a half, we got it fixed and continued on. What is probably the highlight of my driving career, without a doubt was starting the 24 hours of Daytona. There is nothing like it! I was in the middle of the pack because we qualified about 40th, out of 88 cars, we came in 4th in the GT3 class. I remember coming up on the bank before the green flag and I just took it in and relaxed for a minute and said o myself, "Wow, can you believe what I'm doing?" It was so unbelievable, I just looked at all the different cars and I just took it all in and then I got back and just focused on the race. I did about an hour and 45 minute stint and when you pull into the pits you jump out of the car help the other driver in, strap him in hook up the radios and I jumped back over the wall and I almost collapsed. By the time I realized I was through and all my adrenaline was gone, you just use up so much energy trying to drive, because you're scared to death because not only is it difficult because of all the cars and so on but there are so many people involved. Your whole pit crew and the other drivers and the money and everything. The last thing you want to do is be the first guy out and wreck the car. I was happy I brought it in, in the same condition I took it out.

After I sold my 993 RS America I bought a 996 Cup Car. I think I was the fifth person in the USA to have a 996 Cup Car. My first event was at Laguna Seca. My first day out I hit oil at turn three and flew off the track and backed into a wall. It was my first mishap in ten years and these things are going to happen. After 10 years of racing it was my first incident.

Larry Ferguson did my graphics, he runs ProCut Vinyl Graphics in San Marcos. The blue on my car reflects at night. Sometimes I'm in my garage and I open up a side door and you can see all the different shades of blue, it's kind of neat. The 996 drives so differently than the 911, so it's taken a while to get used to it. I set a track record the last time I took it out so we're getting there. I'd like to do more racing, but with a growing family I haven't got the time or the money to really do more than I do. It's takes so much time to just manage your business and family and I would need time to find sponsorship to go to the next level of racing.

I did the Tribute to Le Mans last year with Cort Wagner and we didn't get to finish the race, so I'd like to come back this year and finish what we started. (They did go and were in the lead the whole race until a 30-cent fuse went out and they were unable to continue…it was heartbreaking to watch). I won it once; I've come in second a couple of times, third once. One time I was winning the race and I had a 19 second lead and coming into turn four and the car started to run out of gas and we were on reserve. I kept weaving the car back and forth so it would start up again and it would go a little farther and run out and finally at turn nine it stopped and I was coasting to the finish line and 100 yards from the finish line Mark Mahelic passed me and won the race. I was furious.. I coasted into second place. I just pulled over and I went for a walk, nobody even knew where I had gone. Everyone wondered where I was. I didn't want to do something I would regret later. I drove two cars in that race so I came in second and third but I would have given up both of those for a first. That was 1995. I won it in 1998, with Robert Dalrymple and Steve Alercon.

Here's a great story from the Porsche Parade held in San Diego in 1992, all week long they are constantly giving out door prizes. Every time we were sitting at a table everybody around us would win a jacket or a radios, something for their car and we weren't winning anything. We thought this is ridiculous they must have lost our number. So the very last night when they have the big banquet and there were over a thousand people. Again they are giving out prizes and nothing for us. They got ready for the grand prize, a three week vacation to Germany, they give you a Porsche to drive while you're there, they fly you first class, a tour of the Porsche Factory, They put you up in Stuttgart's finest hotel and on and on and on. Our number was 130 and the first number they called was a one. The second number was a three….my wife and I looked at each other. Then they said the third number is a zero!!!!!!!!!!!! Steve and Barbara Velazquez are going to Germany!!!!!!! We got to ride on the Porsche test track, at the Warsach racing facility there. We got to go out in a brand new 911 RSR and a 968 RSR, they were supposed to take us out in street cars, but they just happened to have race cars there that day so they took us out in those. It was just great! We got to drive around Germany and Switzerland for a few weeks…so it's a fun thing being involved in the PCA. I would say most of my core friends that I deal with today, because Porsches are such a big part of our lives, are people that we met through the PCA."