Howard and Douglas Sharp Win the 2019 Great Race !!

It happened again... and I am proud to say this one was the best to date. The Great Race Team of Howard and Douglas Sharp and their 1916 Hudson Pike Peak Hill Climb Car crossed the finish line in Tacoma Washington (after nine days and 2600 miles) fourteen seconds ahead of the next car!

Typically the race is much closer than that, such as last year when the top four finishers all had scores within the same second, which is why the Great Race is scored down to a hundredth of a second. So this win was unprecedented. It also means the Sharp team had to lead the scoring most every day, which they did... for seven out of the nine days. They did it in an open car which makes it even more of an accomplishment.

They suffered thru the weather extremes with the hottest day being in California at 103 degrees and the coolest being the trip over the pass in Oregon where it was 29 degrees and snowing.

It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words... so here are a few of the winning team doing what they do best, for this, the third time... enjoy.

You can determine the temperature by the way they are dressed...

That Fifth Avenue Tag Topper has been a lot of hard miles...

     Yes, that is a Chevrolet 6 cylinder carburetor. Simple, and reliable is good. One of the big advantages to this engine is that it came balanced from the factory and was designed for the Pikes Peak hill climb race in Colorado. So it has a long stroke and lots of low end torque which helps with climbing hills, which they do a lot of in the Great Race. The engine is also very smooth, which helps keep the rest of the car from being damaged from vibration.

That little round sticker on the dash that says "ACE is an award for a perfect score on a leg, a leg being a specified portion of the race, usually between two checkpoints. If you look at this car it is covered with them. They have actually ran out of space for ace awards and have been removing old ones to make room for the new ones. And there is some prize money associated with those as well.

If you read the story on the home page about how the Great Race works I talk about a lap board. This is one of those, every team sets them up different, this just happens to be the one from the winning car.

I also talked about how the team has to go out and practice and learn how to be consistent in the way they accelerate and decelerate each time, then they have to make a chart. Well everybody has to do that, even the winning team.

The Fifth Avenue Tag Toppers have been along for the ride since 1989. Sometimes they end up a little worse for the wear... but in this case they have done better than the 1916 New York License plate it is attached too.

Douglas Sharp is the Navigator and has proven to be a pretty darn good one!

Howard is the driver and his job is more difficult than you think. If he is off by just one mph going either up hill or down, that will result in their time being off over 60 seconds in an hour! These guys are off on average, less than five seconds in an eight hour day!

Focus , Focus, Focus !

The guy in the middle is Jeff Stumb director of the Great Race. Yes that is yet another award for a perfect day on the Great Race.

At the awards banquet the Sharp team received two of the famed eagle awards... one for winning their class and one for winning the race overall. In the future there is likely to be the Howard and Douglas Sharp Bird Sanctuary Foundation.

This shows how big the birds really are. The banquet was held at the LeMay automotive museum in downtown Tacoma Washington. Harold LeMay was a local businessman who started a refuse and towing company shortly after World War II. At the time of his passing in 2000 his collection included over 3,000 vehicles along with a huge automobilia collection located in Spanaway Washington, a suburb of Tacoma Washington. At its peak Harold's refuse service ran 400 trucks every day.

The charming lady to the right is Janet Sharp. Howard's wife. She is the calm one who keeps everyone focused and takes care of the details.

There was a large crowd at the banquet but when 125 cars are entered and you add in the support people and the Great Race staff... that comes to a total of about 490 people moving across the country and staying at a different motel in a different town every night for ten days.

This year with the race being on the West Coast and most of the racers living on the Eastern half of the United States, many of them elected to ship their cars out to California and then fly to the starting line. 

The Reliable Carrier company hauled 80 of the 125 cars entered, to the starting line in Riverside California. That took 17 trucks who all arrived on the same day in Riverside. That was quite a sight! 

Now..imagine the logistics of getting those 80 cars back home where they came from,  which amounts to locations all across the country.

I not only sponsor the Sharp Racing team which I first began sponsoring in 1989 I also sponsor a car in the expert class and one in the rookie class. Check out the other blog for the details on the 1940 Chevrolet coupe and the 1939 Ford Police car.

The Follow Up

One thing that seems to have disappeared in modern business is the personal relationships. The one on one relationships have been traded for a simple email or text and often times people do business with each other for years, but only communicate via a text or email and as a result know nothing about each other except telephone numbers and email addresses.

I may be showing my age but when I started business in 1980's customers (and even today) customers were/are identified by name not a number and eventually you would meet most of them at a car show or swap meet.  Even as my business has grown and customers call and order from places like England, Sweden, and Belgium I still take the time to get to know them, what cars they own and a little about them.

New customers are surprised even today,  when they get a real person on the phone, and that they are not assigned a customer number at Fifth Avenue, instead we use their name and will also take the time to answer questions along with taking their parts order. "You mean I don't have to call a tech line to get my questions answered before I order?..." It is still one stop shopping, the same guy, (me) who will take the order, answer any questions and you are done, simple as that. But that is the way it should be, the guy or gal on the phone should now how every part they sell works, and how to install it correctly, and be able to answer any questions you have!

Which brings me back to the original point of this discussion. I have sponsored Howard Sharp in the Great Race for 30 years. We grew together learning how the Great Race works, he learned the navigation and driving skills, and I learned the importance of how to make an antique car reliable enough to be driven 4500 miles (as the Great Race was in the early days) and not break down so Howard could do what he did best.

We both learned a lot in those early days... from each other and from our hands on experiences. Even in those early days after the race was over and we each had a week or two to gets things back to normal, I would get a hand written letter from Howard, thanking me for the my sponsorship, for the parts I donated, and for the knowledge I shared, and for making his car reliable so he could focus on what he needed to do. He said he liked never having to worry if his car would start when it was hot, or if he would have a dead battery before the end of the day.

To a guy just starting out in business and not having a wheel barrow full of money... that meant a lot to me. Money was tight in those early days and I always had to decide what I could do for advertising that would get me the most bang for my buck. Sponsoring Howard was always a no brainier.

Howard would hold show and tell at night in the parking lot of the hotel for all of the Great Race teams, showing what parts I put on his car and how they worked  Because he was always finishing in the top ten and his car seldom broke down and he never had a dead battery, they figured he must be doing things right. Those teams began calling me asking for "what Howard has on his car..." That put Fifth Avenue on the Great Race map, thanks to Howard.

So here we are in 2019 thirty years after it all began and Howard along with his son Douglas have won the Great Race for the third time taking home $50,000. And true to tradition here comes the Thank you note, hand written, just as they have been since the beginning! As a sponsor it means a lot to me to get a hand written note, even after all of these years. I shows they truly appreciate the sponsorship when they take the time to sit down and write a hand written note.

Howard and I work on many projects together throughout the year, but the Great Race has always been something special. Douglas, has acquired the same business manners and also follows up with hand written letters. It is the little things they do. that matter.

So if you think the old ways of doing business have disappeared I can tell you there is still one class act on the planet. and I know how lucky am to still get to experience that.