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The Natural - Stephanie Herbage - A Future Motorsport Force to Reckon With

Feb 25, 2011

And this is the borrowed car she finished the year with.

At first glance Stephanie Herbage looks just like any 18-year-old, full-time college student, holding down two part-time jobs, yet still managing to squeeze in quality time with chums. However, upon closer examination, this Moreno Valley, California teenager is infinitely nuanced, with more layers than a Bermuda onion.

This is the car Stephanie started the 2010 season in.

Last year Stephanie started racing American Factory Stock cars after her father, Dan and brother Matt, bought a racecar and figured it would be fun to put a girl in the in the car to beat the boys. See, they already knew about her crazy, intuitive, skills for all things with motors and wheels, and yes, even wings.

Roughly seven years ago Dan and Matt started flying RC planes at Hemet model airfield. When Stephanie asked the instructor to teach her, he explained he didn't teach kids under 12, but as a consolation he offered to take her out on a short test flight. Only minutes later he returned, looked at Dan and said "Have her here every Saturday at 8:00 A.M. - she's a natural!"

When she's not racing "Super-Steffie" is the official Perris Auto Speedway pace car driver.

Stephanie learned in four weeks, what usually takes two or more months for other new pilots. The entire family has since learned to fly as they enjoy the family time. And that's how the Herbage Family Flying Circus team name came to be.

On the track Stephanie immediately became a fan favorite at Perris Auto Speedway, earning the nickname "Super-Steffie." Even her fellow competitors can't help but like her, she's competent and earns respect. Last year she crashed her car in only the third outing. Stephanie climbed out of her crashed car and climbed right into the Perris Auto Speedway pace car, and paced the very next A-main the same night.

On Saturdays when she's not racing, she's behind the wheel of the Perris pace car, leading the Sprint Cars around the track for the main events, or at other local venues working promotional opportunities for the Speedway. She spends time with every single fan that greets her, sharing her experience, and inviting them to come out and race. Her goal is not merely to win a race and bring home a trophy, but to introduce young race fans to the track, and generate interest for future drivers. Stephanie is not just a natural behind the wheel it appears, but she's also an innate ambassador for the sport as well.

After the crash last year the new K&N sponsored racer finished the season in a borrowed car. "Luckily my boss and owner of Swedish Speed, Mark Yarbrough, offered to let her race his son's factory stock Nova that he raced the year before," said Dan her father. "This year she will be driving my 1980 Camaro that we built and fitted specifically for her. Her first race in the new car will be March 19, 2011. We are all looking forward to a new season with a new car." Yet despite the crash last year, and completing the season in an unfamiliar car, Stephanie still finished the season in sixth place overall at Perris Speedway.

Clearly genetics and environment contributed to Stephanie's gifts, and while the gene pool thing is rather hit or miss, the surroundings part of her can be easily traced. Stephanie grew up in a family that enjoys going to drag races and watching NASCAR religiously. Her real first-hand taste of speed though came at the age of five, when her uncle taught her to ride his dirt bike and less than three years later she was racing her older brother Matt around the track, and usually beating him.

Stephanie doesn't just drive her racecar either, she works with her dad and brother preparing and fixing it, and she's eagerly learning all she can about the basics of mechanics. On the track she's a fierce competitor, but when she's out of the car, she's a bright, friendly young woman with a glowing smile and sharp sense of humor adored by young fans.

Asked how far she wants to go with racing Stephanie simply says "All the way," then adds, "Possibly even to NASCAR."

Find K&N products for your vehicle using the K&N application search then use the K&N dealer search to find a K&N dealer in your part of the world.

Pro Gas Racer Greg Ventura Revs into Second Place for Fontana Track Championship

Feb 25, 2011

Ventura says his goals for this year are to make the Summit E.T. Series Race of Champions, to finish in the top three in the Southern California Pro Gas Association, and to win a NHRA National Event.

For his first race back into the 2011 season K&N's Greg Ventura decided to race the Summit E.T. Series at the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California, and as he's the first to admit, he was a just bit rusty to the whole bracket racing deal at first. However, his misplaced racing mojo returned pretty quickly.

Greg Ventura admits he started off the 2011 season a tad rusty, but his instincts returned rapidly, as he won and runner-upped last weekend at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana.

"Whenever you are out of the driver's seat for the off season, you tend to forget small details," said Ventura, "that goes with driving a race car, but you quickly regain those instincts."

And indeed he did, Ventura went out in the first round on Saturday, but then went deep into the fourth round on Sunday. The following weekend the Pro Gas Series kicked off and he went to the quarter-finals on Saturday, with the Sunday race getting rained out.

There was another Summit Race on Super Bowl Sunday, but we suspect his concentration wasn't completely on that race as he went out in the first round in that one. "I drove like an absolute jackwagon," remarked Ventura. "I drove really poorly to the finish line, which is part of the rustiness."

"Then here is where it gets good," added Ventura, "I went to Fontana on Saturday and Sunday, and I won on Saturday and I runner-upped Sunday! I'm second in points for the track championship."

Ventura explains that during the off season he worked on some concentration techniques to help him with his focus, and all indications are that it appears to be taking hold.

When we last spoke with Ventura he was half way into his second year working as a Material Lifecycle Analyst for K&N. "The smartest thing I've ever done was coming to work for K&N," he declared at the time. We wondered if the job love affair was still as potent.

"Yes, I really don't call what I do for K&N work. I love what I do, and I love that I am a part of this growing company. K&N makes the best air & oil filters for your money. I run them on both of my race cars, tow vehicles, and every car I own. The benefits are endless!"

When questioned about his race goals for the 2011 season Ventura says, "Yes, I have a couple of goals for the 2011 season. I would like to make the Summit E.T. Series Race of Champions, I would like to finish in the top three in the Southern California Pro Gas Association, and I would like to win a NHRA National Event."

Find K&N products for your vehicle using the K&N application search then use the K&N dealer search to find a K&N dealer in your part of the world.

K&N's Brenda Grubbs Motorsports Strong Out of the Gate in 2011 with Stock Class Camaro

Feb 25, 2011

Brenda supplies another crowd pleasing launch in their 1969 Camaro

Plant City, Florida resident Brenda Grubbs has shown, over her drag race driving career, that she is quite a force to be reckoned with and exhibiting no signs of that changing with the new season. With numerous accolades as a driver in both NHRA and IHRA, Brenda is quick to point out that it's not just her actions that have and continue to make it all possible.

Champions on and off the track, Stock powerhouse couple Bill & Brenda Grubbs

"This is a team," she said. "When my husband Bill and I started this, he was the one who pushed me to get into racing. At the time, I did not want to. Because unless the wife is involved, she either doesn't go [to the events] or she goes and sits and I really had no interest in that. He just kept after me and after me to get a car and I said, well what if I drive? He said OK and I thought to myself, yeah how long is that going to last."

More than a decade later, in the same 1969 Camaro they started with, it's still going strong.

2011 will find Brenda and Bill once again chasing points in Stock across NHRA Division 2 and a good handful of NHRA National events.

"We are primarily running NHRA events this year and filling in with IHRA where we can," said the award winning Account Manager for General Mills. "We started off the season with the IHRA event in West Palm [Florida] and couldn't make it to Immokalee because my husband is a Delta pilot and cannot take off more than two weekends a month. So we really have to pick and choose what races we go to. And believe it or not, since Immokalee was on Super Bowl weekend, we couldn't go because Super Bowl weekend is the most requested off of the year for Delta pilots."

"Plus with us starting off at West Palm, then by not being in Immokalee that gave us a weekend off before the back to back events in Bradenton and Gainesville," she added.

With Bill tuning the car and Brenda driving, they took their 1969 C/SA Camaro right to the number one qualifying spot at their season opener, where Brenda made it to six cars in Stock Eliminator during the IHRA Palm Beach Nitro Jam.

They were back into action for their first scheduled NHRA Division 2 event at Bradenton Motorsports Park, where Brenda quickly put their entry right at the top of the heap, only to be knocked down a few notches during the final qualifying session.

Again the team put together another strong showing with quite a few round wins before narrowly missing a bye into the final, when Brenda found herself on the wrong side of a double breakout in the quarterfinals.

While Brenda and Bill continue to compete with their Camaro in Stock Eliminator, they are pretty excited about the new project car they are putting together at home. "It's also a 1969 Camaro and it will be a 427," smiled Brenda. "It will more than likely run in SS/DA. We did buy it as a roller, but Bill wants to make some significant updates and he's very big into safety, so there are a lot of safety related updates that we are going to make. We are hoping that we will debut the car this time next year. There is no pressure to get it done, but with the way my husband is, I'm sure it will be ready by then."

Once the new edition to the Grubbs stable is complete, Brenda will drive both cars.

Just like the 1969 Camaro that Brenda and Bill have won numerous championships with, the new 1969 Super Stock Camaro will be fully equipped with K&N Engineering products.

"We only use high quality products," she noted. "We have been using both the K&N air filter and oil filter on our car and will being doing so as well for the new car." The month of March will be a very busy one for the husband and wide duo with three scheduled NHRA events starting with a NHRA Division event in Valdosta, Georgia before moving on to the GatorNationals in Gainesville, Florida and wrapping up the month at the NHRA Cajun SportsNationals in Belle Rose, Louisiana.

Brenda looks forward to another season on the trail right alongside her husband Bill, doing what they love to do together.

"It's so awesome to have a passion that we both share," she pointed out. "It's not like so many other couples where the husband is out golfing on the weekend and the wife goes shopping or whatever. This is something that we share and we share it off the track, too. I mean we are always talking about it, thinking, planning and so forth. We have a great collaboration when it comes to who handles what for the team."

Find K&N products for your vehicle using the K&N application search then use the K&N dealer search to find a K&N dealer in your part of the world.

K&N's Peter Biondo Kicks of His 2011 Season with Super Gas Victory at NHRA Div 2 Event

Feb 21, 2011

Peter Bionda drove Anthony Bertozzi's 1963 Corvette Roadster with a PAR 565 BBC.

After one of the worst winters in many years to strike the northeastern part of the U.S., New York native Peter Biondo was more than elated to start his race season early in Florida.

NHRA Super Stock, Super Gas and Division 7 Racer Peter Biondo

Biondo recently competed at the NHRA Division 2 opener at Bradenton Motorsports Park in Bradenton, Florida, where there were many racers in Super Stock and Super Gas who wish he was still digging out from a big pile of snow.

While there aren't many classes that he hasn't competed in, Super Gas isn't quite the norm for Biondo as folks as more accustomed to seeing him in the Stock, Super Stock classes.

"Basically I ran a little Super Comp and Super Street back in the day let's say," said Biondo of the class change to Super Gas. "Late last year I decided to try Super Gas a little bit here and there, just to change it up a little. I plan on doing more this year, I'm not going to say that I will run it full-time. Stock and Super Stock lately, especially in Stock in the faster classes, which are the A, B and C classes, there are more heads up runs and you really have to work your tail off for those. So, I just want to jump in and do some Super Gas races here and there."

After his first weekend out, he might want to rethink that strategy.

"The Super Gas car is actually Anthony Bertozzi's 1963 Corvette Roadster with a PAR 565 BBC in it fully protected by K&N filter products," noted Biondo. "With my tight schedule, I just don't have time for actual testing. I do my testing during time runs. So on Friday, I got the throttle stop ratio figured out and made some adjustments to the stop RPM and then on Saturday I got a little closer [to the 9.90 index], started to get zoned in on the numbers and we just took it from there."

Biondo was also competing in Super Stock for the Bradenton Division race and while the starting line procedure between the two classes are quite a bit different, it certainly did not affect him.

"Believe it or not, I really believe it helps me rather than hurts," he explained. "A lot of people may think the opposite. The hardest part of a Super Stock or full-tree is to react to the flash of the bottom bulb, which it exactly the same to reacting to the flash of the pro-tree. So when I go back and forth, it kinda keeps me in that sharp mindset of really just reacting to the flash of the bottom bulb and not anticipating it."

While some folks may think that getting to compete in two cars during the same event is an advantage, Biondo describes it as "absolute mayhem".

"It is an advantage in the first and maybe in the second rounds, when the rounds are really spread out and you have the time to focus on each one individually," he pointed out. "Overall, it actually hinders my program sometimes. Like this race, you get down to the semi's in both [classes] and it's absolute mayhem with the round-robin rounds. You barely have time to hook the battery charger up and even look at what the car is really running or hardly study the weather."

"Like when I was going up for the semi-final in Super Stock, the air was changing like crazy and the only time I had to decide what dial-in I was going to put on the car was driving up to the staging lanes," he noted. "And then the moment you get up there, they are pulling you right out for the run."

Being the top-notch driver that he is, Biondo was making all look like a piece of cake even when the Super Stock car he was driving gave him a fairly scary pass during the earlier elimination rounds.

"The Super Gas car was eventful," reflected Biondo. "The Super Stock car threw me a curve ball in the second round. It went very high in the air [on the launch] and when it slammed down it broke the steering. I knew the guys I was running was a tenth or two slower than the index, so while all this is happening I am telling myself, ‘If I can stay in this, I can win this round easily.' But it had landed and made a move toward the wall."

Thanks to the bright Florida sun, Biondo was totally unaware that he already had won this round, thanks to his opponent's redlight, but couldn't see that his win light was on.

"I had straightened the car out, but the wheel was well, let's put it this way, instead of your hands being at ten and two, it was more like seven and one," he confessed. "It wasn't the most pleasant feeling going down the track like that, but I made it to about eight-hundred feet and then lifted."

"So when I got back to the pit, I had about three or four guys come over, including Nick Folk, who came over with a welder to get it back together," he continued. "So I've got to get back up to the lanes to run Super Gas and they are back there banging on stuff, welding and lots of thrashing going on."

The Super Stock car was definitely fixed as Biondo went on to the semi-finals before bowing out to Jeff Strickland.

"I just lost a good race to a good driver," said Biondo. "I just didn't have my target reaction time, which I would have liked to have has a low-teen light. The conditions were changing, it was getting dark and call it being gun shy, I only had a .030."

"When I lost in Super Stock, I felt my chances were better in Super Gas," he continued. "It gave me a little more time to focus."

Biondo, who averaged a little better on the tree than his final round opponent throughout the event, still saved his best reaction time of eliminations, more than doubling up on Vince Costa Jr. in the final and carrying that through to the stripe to push Costa out for a 9.910 to 9.888 victory.

Both the Super Stock and Super Gas entries Biondo wheeled through numerous rounds during the event are fully equipped with both K&N Oil and Air Filters.

"There is way too much invested both time and money these days to take any chances on the race track with any sort of sub-par parts," explained Biondo. "I've been using K&N products for several years and I have never had any sort of failures. Besides the way K&N makes it easy for you to change the oil filters with the nut on the bottom of the filter, I have very little engine problems and I'm sure the K&N filter has something to do with that."

Biondo only has a few days to enjoy his season opener victory, before it's time to give it his all again, this time at the NHRA Division 2 event held at Gainesville Raceway and needless to say, he's feeling pretty good.

"You know first race of the season, you always have question marks in your head and I don't care how experienced you are or how many wins you have," he said. "You always have those question marks in your head because you haven't raced for several months. You are wondering if you are going to be rusty or this may sound funny, but little things go through your head like, do I still have it, am I going to be able to race at the level of expectations I have for myself and after the first win light, or two or three, that all gets erased."

"I am very confident of myself right now in both cars," he said of heading to Gainesville Divisional. "I'm ready and Gainesville is on my list of tracks that I fair better than some other tracks. I typically do pretty well there."

Find K&N products for your vehicle using the K&N application search then use the K&N dealer search to find a K&N dealer in your part of the world.

Xplizit Car Club's Jonathan Vargas' Golden Dodge Ram is Wildest at 2010 SEMA

Feb 21, 2011

Vargas says he choose the K&N cold air intake simply because it's the best one available.

The president of Xplizit car club is Jonathan Vargas. In 2009 several legendary Southern California car clubs banded together to create the super car club. In 2010 Rides Magazine voted Xplizit "Crew of the Year." For its members, which spread out to Orange County, Los Angeles, the IE (Inland Empire) and Oxnard - Xplizit is family - and it's about loyalty and respect. Members regularly attend the best car shows around, large or small, and at the biggest car show of them all, SEMA in Las Vegas, Varga's struck pure gold, displaying the wildest 2010 Dodge Ram truck anyone had seen.

Jonathan Vargas' golden ram was without a doubt the wildest Dodge truck at the 2010 SEMA show.

A signature look for Xplizit cars are doors, and hoods, and trunks that run amuck, opening every which way, and always there's an element of silver or gold leaf in the paint scheme. The golden Ram chariot Vargas wowed the crowd with at SEMA was his first personal project vehicle, although he had completely redone the truck with this new look. He says he's also built a show car for his wife. And his wife and family is what drew Vargas into making show vehicles.

"I needed a hobby to keep me busy, something to keep me going, and have my family get involved with," said Vargas.

His inspiration for the truck was straightforward, "I wanted to have the wildest Dodge truck out there, and I did it."

The truck rides on a custom air-ride suspension and 28-inch Lexani wheels.

"There's no real theme, but there are a whole lot of mods," adds Vargas. "Things like a motorized tilt forward hood, Panorama sunroof, suicide doors, custom body kit, shaved door handles all around, shaved tail light and a third brake light. There's a 27-inch LCD screen molded to the tailgate, and custom Kandy Trophy gold paint."

The truck rides on a custom fit air-ride suspension, and 28-inch Lexani wheels. It has a very custom fiberglass trunk, with four 27-inch LCD screens and two 15-inch subwoofers, with three six-and-half inch component speakers in the fiberglass door panels. There are also two additional 22-inch screens enclosed in fiberglass in the dash backed by four more 12-inch sub's and seven more component speakers. And they are all powered by an MA Audio system. Vargas has huge skills in this arena, as his job is installing home theater systems. The interior is finished with two-tone, and a there's K&N cold air intake under the hood.

An Xplizit car club trademark is doors, trunks and hoods that open in various complementary angles.

Vargas is just as straightforward about why he decided to go with K&N, "They are the best at what they do - for performance and better gas mileage."

He says that getting the truck ready for SEMA turned into many late nights, with adjustments being made right up to the last second. Remarking afterward "It was pretty exhausting." His efforts have been rewarded many times other time too, the truck graced the cover of Rides Magazine last September, and it was on the February 2011 cover of Truckin Magazine, along with consistently placing first in various other car shows. When it's not being shown the golden Ram sits safely in Vargas' garage.

The 2010 SEMA show was the fourth one for Vargas, and according to him "it's keeps getting better." He believes more than likely he'll be back again next year too. His goals for Xplizit car club for this year are to continue to grow stronger, and to continue to be even more recognized in the car industry, and to represent their products in even more car shows.

"Thank you to K&N Engineering for all the support you have provided to Xplizit car club, from Jonathan Vargas, the president and the x-family."

Find K&N products for your vehicle using the K&N application search then use the K&N dealer search to find a K&N dealer in your part of the world.

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