Motorsports Brands - Ken Stout Racing Continues To Develop Scion FR-S For St. Pete

Brownsburg, Jan. 25, 2013: With just over three months until the season opener at St. Petersburg, the Ken Stout Racing team (KSR) continues to work hard in preparation for the first race of the season. Ken Stout, Team Principal for KSR, gives us an update from their headquarters in Brownsburg, IN.

What an exciting time at KSR! I’ve made my living in this industry for the past 15 years and while I thought I had a good idea of how tough it would be to build a championship caliber race team I didn’t think it would be this tough. With that said it’s been a great journey to date and some wonderful companies and great friends have come on board.

We’ve had some challenges along the way because the Scion FR-S is so new. Example, because the car is such a hot seller right now the timeframe to order and receive a spare engine is long so we had to go to Plan B which was to obtain a flood car. Yes, a flood car that was damaged during Sandy was located and bid on until we won it. The process took about three weeks. The car is so new it still had the shipping plastic on it. Yet because of Sandy, it also had water in the taillights, yikes!

It’s our pleasure here at KSR to acknowledge some world-class companies who have jumped on board to partner with us including Eibach, Crower and JRI. I have to thank Frank Simonetti of Eibach as he was very instrumental in helping us develop a relationship with JRI.

Jeff Ryan and his talented staff at JRI Shocks will be taking care of our damper program and their reputation is among the best in the industry.

Crower is also helping us out as they are developing connecting rods strong enough to deal with the extra horsepower the FR-S’ FA-20 engine will be producing courtesy of the TRD Supercharger. It’s a challenging but exciting project for Crower as the rods are like nothing else ever made with the 18 degree cap.

The engineers at JE Pistons have also been very busy as they have developed pistons for our FA-20 with their new A Symmetrical design.

Our good friend Scott Poncher from ReadyLIFT is sponsoring the wrap on our trailer. While ReadyLIFT isn’t normally associated with sports car racing most everyone knows someone with a truck and those truck owners can all use ReadyLIFT products. He has supported our efforts for a couple of years now and we’re proud to have them on board once again!

TK Designs will do a complete wrap on our KSR rig. Tyler and Mandi are located in the Charlotte area and are very talented. I would urge you to look them up – they can do everything from full helmet wraps to tractor trailers. They are wonderful people to work with and did a great job with the wrap on our car.

We had the pleasure of meeting Rob Held from Fuel Safe at the International Motorsports Industry Show in Indianapolis and will be working closely with them on the fuel delivery system. Another great company with an awesome reputation!

And finally, a big thank you to Staci Langham, Dee Duncan, Susan Dunklau, Geoff Carter, Ken Tripkos, and Ken Brown at the Pirelli World Challenge for helping KSR with logistical and series related elements.

As I said this is all very exciting, but it is also very time consuming as you might imagine because this is the first Scion FR-S racecar being built at this level for Sports Car racing. The great news is all of our partners are working together and the end results will be something that is available for all FR-S owners!

While the car is coming together, sponsors are being solicited to support the race season. A KSR tractor trailer is being outfitted for a couple of trips across the country as we compete in the Pirelli World Challenge. Three words come to mind – spares, spares and more spares! I think we’re going to need a separate trailer for the car by the time we get all the spares and support items loaded in the big truck.

Former Pirelli World Challenge racer and team owner Eric Meyer has been a massive help over the past couple of months. This is the same guy we raced against in 2010. He hung up his helmet in 2012, but still loves the sport. He’s been there and done that and brings a lot of insight and planning to the table along with the support of some great friends from his former team.