A little about Freed Racing
Hi, my name is Dennis Freed and thank you for visiting the Freed Racing website.
As with anything there are always many reasons for things to happen and many
stories to tell of how we got where we are today. I won’t go back to the
beginning, but I will say that I have always had a fascination for fast cars and
for some reason I can never stay away from them for too long. I call it the
Freed gene and I am sure I got it from my father, who still to this day pretty
much lives and breathes cars.
No matter where I am or what I am doing I always find myself drawn towards
automotive performance and drag racing. I was always tinkering with my vehicles
and seeing just how much I could get out of them (hopefully without breaking too
many parts). I had a few times when I rode home in the cab of a tow truck, but
it was not very often.
After spending many years traveling around the world and experiencing many
things that helped me to learn about and better understand different people and places
, I now find myself in Germany. One of the first things I discovered was
that there is an international drag racing event held right here in the
Mannheim area every year, the
NitroOlympX. Of course I attended the event that year and every year since,
first as a spectator and now as a competitor.
I held off the Hot Rod bug for almost 12 months, but then I made the decision
and had my 1969 Nova SS 396 4-speed transported to Germany; I was feeling whole
again. As a racer I was well aware of the dangers of street racing (first hand
experience?) and I became involved with a group of people that were working to
promote racing at the track, not the street. As time passed I found myself a
part of the 1 on 1
Motorsports group founded by Silke Beer. We established a safe place where
people could truly test the limits of their vehicles without endangering the
public safety. Silke has a vision to promote safe motorsport events throughout
Germany and when she gets the chance you can expect to see her setting up her
own full blown drag racing events in the future.
During one of the events I met some racers from Holland (them Dutch guys can
be a little wild sometimes) who told me about some races that were held in
Drachten. We made a trip up there and met a lot of nice people and had a great
time. Now that urge to go faster (that is always there) got me to start working
on a plan to move out of bracket racing by setting up my 69
Nova for the Super Street class. Well, even though there are a few places that
can perform the necessary work to properly construct a race car here in Europe,
I was not conversant enough in the languages and did not have the connections
that I was used to in the United States; so things were going slowly.
As I was talking one evening with
Robert Joosten at the Speed & Design event in Utrecht, Netherlands he
convinced me that I should consider racing in the Super Gas class and he even
had a few leads on some good cars that were for sale. Maybe it didn’t really
take too much convincing, but I always keep my “Robert Joosten” excuse in my
back pocket just in case.
Next thing you know I find myself in Berlin looking at two really nice cars (both
of them Novas by the way) and I decide to get the nice 1966 Nova that Gunnar
Boll and his crew have put together over the last few years. So now I needed a
crew. Lucky for me a good friend that I worked with at the 1 on 1 events Rick
“Mad Max” Castille agreed to become my crew chief and help with the car. You
couldn’t ask for a better guy whether it’s on the road, at the garage, in the
pits or at the starting line (Thanks Rick!).
We went through the motor and the car felt really strong but we were stuck in
the 10.2 range and things were not working out like we wanted. So we make some
adjustments and get some pieces and parts and next thing you know we’re running
9.5’s (Hockenheim 2003) and now we need to figure out how to slow this baby
down.
It was around this same time that we ran into
Norbert Kuno and got
involved with a great reminder from home,
Lucas Oil. We’ve been
running Lucas oil products exclusively in our vehicle and you can’t ask for a
better product. I'll post some pictures of the bearings in the engine when we check
out the car this winter and you can see for yourself. Last year we didn't even change
bearings because they still looked new. Although Lucas Oil is just getting started
here in the Netherlands and Germany, things are only going to get better.
We worked the next year and got a better feel for the car, but we couldn’t
get the consistency we needed to take the Super Gas class. We did make it to the
semi-finals at Hockenheim this year and moved into 10th position in the Dutch
standings, but we decided that the best way we were going to improve was to
install a throttle stop. I know there are some people that think that that’s not
right, but you don’t always get to make the rules yourself. We’ve purchased the
parts from Biondo racing (great folks there, ask for Peter and he will work you
a great deal), and will be getting them installed and checked out this winter.
Things are looking good for this year. We’ve found a great sponsor (Pixeleye.de)
willing to help us get the message out to the internet. Of course you know about
it because you’re reading it here right now on the outstanding page that Dirk
created for us. (Thanks Dirk!). We’re hoping to be able to get a little more
support from Lucas Oil this year and I have a couple of other possibilities I’m
working to help ease the financial strain. I keep telling my son that I hope he
stays really smart so he can get a scholarship for college since I’m using his
college education funds driving on drag strips throughout Europe.
I had to let the 1969 Nova go to take care of some financial
requirements and hopefully let us make a few more events this year. The 69 is in
good hands though and you will be able to see it putting its big-block power to
the track whenever you’re at the races in Drachten.
If there is something you'd like to see or know just drop me a line at FreedRacing(at)AOL(dot)com