34th Rolex Monterey Historic Automobile Races

News: Race of Legends
Thursday, 8/16/07

Four automotive technicians and diagnostic specialists from Northern California Toyota and Lexus dealerships are playing key roles as part of the preparation and maintenance crew handling Scion tCs driven in the Race of Legends at the Monterey Historics weekend at the Laguna Seca race course.

The team includes Rock Howard, 49, of Elk Grove, shop foreman at Sacramento's Maita Toyota; Mike Rippy, 55, of Hayward, a diagnostic specialist at Magnussen Lexus of Fremont; and Santa Rosa's Ken Untalan, 52, shop foreman at Santa Rosa's Freeman Toyota, and Gary Bricker, 42, a diagnostic specialist at Freeman Lexus.

The team, operating under guidance of San Francisco Region Toyota senior field engineer Ron Ishii and Stan Kiyan, senior product engineer at Toyota's San Ramon headquarters, are responsible for tuning and monitoring the race-prepared Scion tCs driven Saturday (August 18) by some of the world's greatest drivers in the Race of Legends.

The team's charter, according to Ishii, is to make sure each of the finely tuned tCs goes out on the track ready to run with equally matched capabilities.

"That includes everything from accurately monitoring tire pressure to bleeding and re-checking brake system pressure," says Ishii, who hand picked his crew from among literally dozens of automotive technical experts he supervises among the San Francisco Region's 55 Toyota and 12 Northern California Lexus dealers.

"With legendary drivers like Bobby Unser, Bobby Rahal, Parnelli Jones, Emerson Fittipaldi and some of the greatest names in the history of international motor sports here - and each eager to make a run at the challenging Laguna course, we've got to make sure every machine is equalized to the finest degree."

Most of the technicians have a long-running love of motor racing.

Bricker summed up the excitement of being able to work on this team: "These are the great names I grew up with," he says.