Pitt to revive racing team

At a campus that boasts more than 300 student organizations and 17 collegiate sports teams,… At a campus that boasts more than 300 student organizations and 17 collegiate sports teams, could students at Pitt be in need of another activity?

The answer is yes, according to Bob Fryer, a Pitt alumnus and racing enthusiast who is positioning to resurrect a national racing team at Pitt this spring. Fryer believes that students will jump at the opportunity to prove themselves in the demanding sport of auto racing.

But starting a collegiate racing team would not be a new foray for Fryer, let alone the University. Fryer chartered the very first collegiate road racing team in the country as a Pitt undergraduate in 1970. Little known to most current students, the University of Pittsburgh Auto Racing Team won national recognition throughout its 10-year existence, garnering attention from both The New York Times and CBS.

With just a few automotive manuals and the knowledge they had from working on their own vehicles, Fryer and a few friends bought a green ’66 Corvette Convertible and began transforming it into racing condition.

After about a year of diligent after-school and weekend shop work, the team of students entered their car in a Sports Car Club of America regional race. But the Corvette puttered out after less than two laps because of mechanical difficulty and the team made an early trip home.

Rather than giving up, Fryer’s team persisted and later won the Sports Car Championship of Northeastern United States three times with him at the wheel.

Fryer makes a point of refusing credit for the team’s success. He points instead to the group of enthusiastic students, men and women alike, who became the racing team’s backbone.

“[Students] think to be on a racing team, you have to be a mechanic,” Fryer said. “We ran a student corporation.”

The team set up an office in the William Pitt Union, formed public relations and business departments and began soliciting funds from the Student Government Board. The business department contacted sponsors like Gulf Oil, Goodyear and Pepsi-Cola, all of which had a hand in propelling the team to further achievements on the racetrack.

Just about any student with an interest in the club was allowed to assist in some way, Fryer said. And that, of course, included the automotive end of the team.

Fryer and his team of student mechanics made a series of innovations in the shop. After Penske Racing, a professional team, gave Pitt a ’69 Chevrolet Camaro, the mechanic crew set to work inventing its own power steering system, which Penske had not been able to perfect.

The student mechanics also developed the first 180 degree, spaghetti-style exhaust system for a front engine car, which gave the Camaro close to 15 percent more horsepower.

Fryer is especially proud of the mechanic crew’s manifold innovation.

“When Penske was racing the American Motors V-8 car in NASCAR races, there were no good intake manifolds to fit an American Motors V-8. We invented a high-performance intake manifold, [which] we modified so that it could be bolted onto an American Motors engine. Penske heard about it and borrowed it until they could build their own.”

In 1976, Fryer elicited the help of professional mechanic Joseph Dvorchak and the team built an even better car – a ’72 Javelin from Penske.

By this point, the attention that Pitt’s Auto Racing Team received for its underdog status began overshadowing that of other teams who complained that the news cameras and reporters were focusing on the non-professional Pitt crew even when their teams won.

SGB funded buses to bring students to and from several important races a few times. Fryer noted that the team competed in eight to 10 races per year, primarily during the summer. But the student team took off class for a few days in February the several times they competed at Daytona’s 24-hour endurance race.

In what would become the team’s final race from that era, Fryer broke the lap record by three seconds at the Watkins Glen Trans Am race in 1980, earning the pole position in the 10-year old Camaro that outweighed the competition.

The team’s illustrious record fell victim to Fryer’s heavy schedule when his mother became ill and his family’s business required more dedication.

But far from forgetting about what he started, Fryer has been lately reinvigorated about the team he started.

“I never fully realized then the advantages that the team was creating for the students until the past couple of years, when I would run into people from the team, and they would tell me how much it meant to them,” Fryer said.

Because of this realization of what the team meant to other people, Fryer has decided to restart the team as team manager.

Fryer said students with an interest in any facet of the racing team should contact Terry Milani on the ninth floor of the William Pitt Union. The two of them plan on holding a student interest meeting in late March.

The main objective of his plan would be the educational benefit and professional experience that a racing team would provide to students, Fryer said.

“Primarily, the auto racing team was probably the best device that the University ever had for applying classroom knowledge in the field. You can listen all you want to the professors, but until you actually apply the classroom information, you are missing something.”