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The
Winning Touch
Exactly
one week before he was tragically taken from us, I had the chance to
meet Steve Grebeck in person. After many telephone conversations during
which he told me the unique story of his life on and off the racetrack,
I finally shook the hand of a man that I had grown to respect and admire
from afar. His genuinely friendly manner and the confident way that he
approached his racing that day in West Palm Beach, Florida only served
to confirm the positive impression that I had formed of him. I
watched as he went from pit to pit, joyfully greeting many fellow
competitors for the first time since the end of the previous racing
season. More often than not, he was soon leaning into an engine
compartment or crawling under a car to fine-tune something or another.
When it came time to put his own car through its paces, he applied 100%
of his skill and expertise to that as well. It was abundantly clear that
his passion for the sport, and the people in it, knew no bounds.
Since
the age of 15 Steve had been totally immersed in the world of
motorsports, first drag racing with his dad and then working with many
of the great innovators and pioneers of the sport as he quickly rose to
become the talented designer, builder and driver that he was. Along the
way, he made many friends and won legions of fans, who along with his
family will now all greatly miss his imposing but gentle presence, his
kindness and his dedication to making the sport he loved better for
everyone. People
like Steve Grebeck come along very rarely in life, and those that knew
and loved him are blessed to have had him in their lives if but for a
brief shining moment. He was without a doubt a man who exemplified the
true ideals of sportsmanship, and he will never be forgotten. Godspeed Steve - I'm glad that I can count myself among the number touched by your all too short time on this Earth, and thankful that I could too grasp your strong and steady hand along the way. a
d v e r t i s e m e n t As
a tribute to the outstanding life and times of Steve Grebeck, we at
CompetitionPlus.com are proud to present his story once again, both for
those who knew him, so that they may pause and reflect, and for those
who never met him so that they too might experience this extraordinary
man. - Brian Wood Dearborn,
Michigan; Roush; Cobra; Glidden - to anyone even vaguely familiar with
the motorsports world, these names and places conjure up only one mental
image - a blue oval badge with the name Ford proudly emblazoned in
script upon it. But for those in the know, it also all relates to one
very talented and ambitious man by the name of Steve Grebeck. Grebeck,
36, was born in the aforementioned industrial heartland of the Midwest,
and from an early age, thanks to the mentoring of his father, he found
himself instinctively drawn to all things fast and mechanical. The
people he met, and worked with during his formative years read like a
'who's who' in the world of major league racing, and make for a very
interesting story indeed. "Through my dad's interest in street and
bracket racing, I was primed to follow in his footsteps from the very
beginning, "Steve related. "I started racing seriously at the
age of 15, running in IHRA Hot Rod and Super Gas at events in Milan,
Michigan. From there we branched out, traveling to other IHRA events as
my school schedule would allow."
Just
one year after launching his racing career, however, the first of what
would become an amazing series of timely opportunities came his way. As
he recalled, "I went to work for Carl Holbrook at Holbrook
Enterprises when I was 16, and stayed there throughout my high school
years. Carl's son Chris (a current IHRA Pro Stock competitor and former
champion) and I both got plenty of 'hands on' experience as part of
Holbrook's Pro Stock and Super Stock racing teams. This is where I
served my apprenticeship as far as my current profession is concerned.
Under Carl's guidance, I learned how to build and maintain racing
engines, but just as important, I had the chance to work with a top
chassis man, and began to learn the skills required in that aspect of
the sport as well." The
chassis man Steve mentions is former A/FX Super Stock and Pro Stock
standout Dave Lyle, who worked at Ford during the day, and did chassis
and engine work at Holbrook's at night. Determined to learn everything
that he could about building race cars, young Steve also worked two
shifts, by day in the machine shop and engine build room, and long into
the night in the chassis shop, building back-halfs and roll cages under
Lyle's supervision. All these hours spent in the workshop didn't leave
much time for school or social activities, but Steve knew he had gotten
a foot in the door, and he was determined to learn as much as he
possibly could. a
d v e r t i s e m e n t To
say that he was a gifted student would be an understatement, as Lyle was
quick to recognize. When he eventually left Ford and went to work for
Jack Roush's fledgling operation, he soon provided his young protégé
with another boost up the ladder. "Dave arranged for me to go work
with him at Roush, and that was where I really furthered my
education," Steve explained. "When I started there, I was
employee number 156, and the entire Roush operation consisted of just
three buildings." In spite of it's limited floor space, however,
the enterprise was already well on its way to establishing a stellar
reputation for innovative design and precision craftsmanship, with Roush
Racing building and campaigning winning race machines in a number of
sanctions. And at one time or another, Steve, who was just 18 when he
came under the tutelage of the master, was involved with them all.
It
must have been a bit overwhelming to be involved at this level of the
racing game at such a young age, a fact that Grebeck readily confirmed.
"Yeah, it was pretty exciting all right. As the new kid, I started
off as both a mechanic and a fabricator, basically watching and learning
in the early days. But before long I worked my way onto the PPG pace car
team, where we built all the pace cars and traveled to races with the
Indy Car team. After time, I also got involved with Jack's Trans Am
team. I guess you have to say I was a bit of a 'Prima Dona' there at the
time, because me and a couple of other guys were soon handling all the
special projects that came in; in addition to the PPG pace cars, we
built the AC Cobras when they came in from England, for example." As
if that wasn't enough to keep him busy, Steve soon found himself
handling race team support duties as well, flying to wherever he was
needed in order to supplement the regular team when they ran into
problems, often working day and night to help sort out ill-performing
exotic machinery. It was quite a responsibility for such a young man,
but he was keen to embrace every performance-related encounter that came
his way, and he made the best of the experience. He continued his story
by describing his ever-expanding role at Roush. "I eventually
became involved with most of the performance-related operations, working
in the engine department and the dyno room most of the time. I didn't
get involved in the building of any of the concept vehicles when I was
there, but rather was involved in doing a lot of the 'trick'
stuff." By
virtue of his skill and experience, Steve was soon heading up his own
department called Special Vehicles. It was here that he was able to
showcase his creative abilities, his team building street rods, Cobras
and Ford Motorsport drag cars for Bob Glidden, among many other
projects. And since his department was housed in the race team building,
he still remained heavily involved with them as well, traveling
throughout North America whenever the necessity arose. He was also there
when Roush first got into Winston Cup racing, and could soon be found
crawling all over those high-speed passenger car clones, too. Something
else that he really enjoyed was working on special-order cars, and it
was one of these, built for a certain customer, which would have a great
impact on his future direction. The
customer in question was 'Stormin' Norman' Gray, who originally had
Roush build him a Cobra, and then came back for a what would turn out to
be a history-making car. It all started innocently enough with a basic
black 1987 Mustang convertible, which, according to Grebeck, "went
through various transformations, from street to strip, back to street
& strip and eventually to full strip, where it was capable of
running in the 11 to 12-second range. At that point, it was a ladder bar
car, with 10"- wide slicks, but with the Mustang craze starting to
gather momentum, and the very first Super Ford 5.0 Shootout soon to be
contested in Columbus, Ohio, Norman came back to Roush and asked what we
could do to take the car to the next level. Taking on the challenge,
Jack built a killer 347" motor for the car, and we added a Doug
Nash 5-speed, new ladder bars, mini-tubs and tightened up the cage a
bit. When it was finished, Stormin' went out and set the world on fire,
making the first 10-second pass in Mustang racing history."
And
that was just the beginning, as Steve related, "back then, everyone
was chasing each other to see who was going to be the first in the 10's,
first in the 9's, and so forth. Well, our car had run the first 10, and
we eventually tweaked it to where it was running 10.30's, but after a
while some of the guys were starting to catch us, so the infamous black
Mustang came back to the shop for it's third and final incarnation. This
time, we completely cut the car to pieces, back-halved the chassis,
installed new suspension, bigger tubs, bigger tires, a wing, prototype
carbon fiber bodywork, a better engine, a better clutch and a better
transmission. When we took it out and ran 9's right off the trailer, we
rocked the Mustang world, and started the performance war that's still
raging today." One
other detail that you should know about these pioneering efforts - It
was Steve himself who was behind the wheel when the second landmark
barrier was smashed, driving for Stormin' Norman' Racing with the
backing of Roush Racing. He explained how it all came about: "After
I went to work for Jack, my driving career took a backseat to work,
basically because I was there 24 hours a day for eight years. But when
Stormin' started running in the 10's, I had the chance to take over the
driving duties, and I was the permanent driver of that car until I left
Roush Racing. We maintained the car at Roush, and were the first
professional team in Mustang racing." a
d v e r t i s e m e n t In
1991, Steve struck out on his own, opening his Steve Grebeck Racecraft
Engineering business in the Detroit suburb of Walled Lake, Michigan.
During the time he was setting up shop, he also put in 6 months at
Taylor, Michigan-based Watson Engineering, another company that
specialized in prototype work. The owner of the company hired Steve
based on his expertise in race car fabrication, because he was
interested in doing some Super Gas and Comp racing. In addition to
building the boss a race car, however, as the company had recently
landed a contract to build a run of special Mustangs for the Shelby
Automobile Club of America (SAC), Steve was put in charge of that
project as well. "We
built over 100 of the Shelby Mustang conversions, which were sold
through Ford dealerships around the country, " Steve remembered.
"They were completely custom built, with new interiors, new
bodywork, upgraded power train - the works. Finished in traditional
Shelby blue and white, and complete with the original style racing
stripes, they were in huge demand, and the run sold out fast." As
we're starting to see as we follow Grebeck's career, however, there's
more to this story as well. "During the time the Shelby project was
under way, I landed a sponsorship deal through SAC to promote their cars
through my drag racing involvement," he said. "So I took the
very last Shelby that we produced, serial number XD1 for experimental
drag car #1, moved it to my shop, and in 90 days we had a Pro Mod-style
drag car built and ready to race.
"The
first time we hit the strip, it ran a 9.20, and it was later the second
Mustang to run in the 8's," Steve continued. "Gene Deputy beat
us by an hour - we were racing in Englishtown, and he was in Houston,
and he did it first." But while that honor eluded Steve's grasp, he
want on to claim many others behind the wheel of the blue and white
beauty, including top finishes at several Fun Ford Weekend (FFW) and
Ford Motorsport Nationals events. The culmination of his efforts came
when he took home all the hardware in the 1993 Pro 5.0 World
Championship Series. 1993
would turn out to be a pivotal year for Grebeck in more ways than one,
however. Another grassroots drag racing movement had slowly but surely
been gathering a head of steam, and just a year earlier Hot Rod magazine
had hooked up with the National Muscle Car Association (NMCA) to
determine who had the fastest street car on the planet. The special race
was held during the NMCA World Finals at Memphis, Tennessee, and its
success launched the phenomenon now known as Street-Legal racing. In
'93, Steve got a first hand look at what all the excitement was about,
traveling to Memphis with his Mustang, and finishing third overall in
spite of being "a few hundred horsepower" underdog. The
next year, he finished runner-up in his Pro 5.0 title defense bid, and
then went back to Memphis, this time with a new car. "We had built
a B1 Volare for a local Detroit street racer named Dan Smith, and I took
it to Memphis and finished third again," Steve reported. "From
there we went to the first Real World Streetnationals at Orlando
Speedworld in Florida, and finished third once again. The next year I
took time off from racing to concentrate on helping various race teams,
but when things began to really open up in Street-Legal, I got involved
again during the 1996 season." 1996
was the year that Hot Rod Magazine decided to stake their own claim to
the fast street car action, and left NMCA to promote their appropriately
named Hot Rod Magazine Street Car Drag Racing Series. The 10-race series
kicked off at Norwalk Raceway Park in Ohio that year, and by all
accounts, the eighth-mile competition was a great success. Top guns Tony
Christian, Nick Scavo and Chuck Samuel, along with many others, were on
hand to thrill the crowd with their rapid street rides. Of course, this
was in the day of actual street-legal cars; cars that had to participate
in a long cruise through nearby neighborhoods, and then be able to
re-start and run on the track.
Another
of the well-known hard chargers at Norwalk that weekend was Michigan's
Mike Moran, and turning the wrenches under the hood of
"Casper", Moran's pure white Camaro, was none other than
"hired gun" Steve Grebeck. During his two-year stint with
Moran, the team became the first legal street car to make a 6-second
pass at 200 miles per hour. And if that wasn't enough of a thrill on its
own, they accomplished the feat in front of 50,000 spectators at the
world's biggest drag race, the NHRA's U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis.
Booked in by Flowmaster for an exhibition, the assembled street-legal
contingent put on a great show, but none more so than Moran and Grebeck.
It was, according to Steve, "one of the best moments of my
life." During
the period between 1998 and 1999, Steve worked as crew chief for yet
another Detroit-area street slugger, Ross Stomp. But it was also at this
time that yet more people who would have a positive impact on his life
entered the picture. Steve and Charlie Halprin, who had been loyal
Racecraft Engineering customers since Steve first opened his doors, were
keen to take their traditional hobby bracket Mustang program to a new
level, and for them, no one but Grebeck could handle the project.
The
car they started with was an '82 Mustang, which Steve set up with a
four-link suspension, a roll cage and a nitrous-boosted powerplant. When
the nitrous system proved troublesome, however, the following winter saw
further refinements made to the car. Along with the addition of a
Procharger blower under the hood, there was also a change in the
driver's seat. Steve Halprin opted to hand the driving duties over to
Greback, and be involved strictly as a car owner along with Charlie. It
was a situation that suited Grebeck just fine. "Yeah, I was back as
another hired gun," he recalled with a laugh. "That version of
the car turned out to be a world-beater when we hit for the track for
the '99 season. It ran in the 7.60's when that was still unheard of. We
switched tires back and forth, and ran in Super Street and Modified
Street in NSCA and NMCA and Pro 5.0 in NMRA. "We
went to Mid-Michigan Motorplex and won the Motor City Shootout, set both
ends of the record in the NSCA Modified Street class, and never looked
back," he continued. "We went on to Macon, and finished
runner-up in the big $10,000 race down there. We wound up the year in
Orlando, where Billy Glidden eliminated us in the semi-finals. In 2000,
we came back out with high expectations, but, as everybody knows, that's
when the 'turbo wars' started, and we found ourselves on the outside
looking in. In NMRA competition, with big tires, we struggled to run our
7.60's while the turbo guys were cruising in the 7.40 range. After the
2000 season, the Halprin's decided to retire the '82 and regroup. That's
when the groundwork for the car we now campaign." The
car that would eventually stun the Mustang world started life as a 1997
Pro Stock-style Mustang, being built for 2000 NMRA Pro 5.0 champion Joe
DaSilva. The Halprins struck a deal with the Canadian competitor, and
ended up buying the unfinished car. "We went to Ford and bought a
body in white, but when it wouldn't fit on my chassis, we pitched it and
started from scratch, eventually fabricating a custom-built skin for the
car," Steve said. "On other fronts, Mike Moran built the
engine for us, John Bennett of Bennett Performance provided all the
killer parts and components that we needed and Craig Liberty helped us
with the Liberty five-speed transmission. Perhaps the key player in the
effort to bring his current ride to life was Harry Hruska of Precision
Turbo, who masterminded the complete turbocharger layout and system, as
well as the fuel management system. He had a major, major role in the
success this car has enjoyed so far."
And
what success that has been. The Halprin/Grebeck Mustang sent shock waves
through the drag racing community when it arrived on the scene part way
through the current season. Of course, those in the know were predicting
that with rules revisions for 2001 allowing full tube chassis, as well
as lower minimum weights, performance would eventually dip well into the
six-second range. But no one expected it to be so soon, or so dramatic.
Steve relived the events leading up to the big breakthrough. "The
first race we went to was the World Ford Challenge in St. Louis. We
actually left the shop with the car unfinished, and a good friend in the
St. Louis area, chassis builder Tim McAmis, was kind enough to work a
day and a half with us to finish the car in his shop. He then went to
the track, and spent another three days with us there, helping us
fine-tune things. He's one of the most outstanding people you'll ever
meet, and without his help we never would have been able to compete at
that event." "Right
out of the trailer we clicked off a run of 7.02 at 202 miles per hour,
and I was taking it easy, believe me," Steve continued. He stepped
things up considerably when he toured the quarter-mile at the NSCA
Rising Sun Shootout in Maryland to the tune of 6.83 at 207. That
particular feat was accomplished at heaver-than-allowed NMRA legal
weight, and on DOT tires as well, since the car was entered in the
Outlaw Street class. Plenty of jaws dropped when 6.83 flashed on the
scoreboard, but the best was yet to come. At the NMRA Motorsports
Nationals at Maple Grove, Pennsylvania, Steve sent the tech officials
sprinting for their rulebooks after he blasted to an incredible 6.77 at
208 during qualifying, a number that was nearly three-tenths under the
previous class record at the time. Signifying
the fact that a new era had indeed dawned in the Pro 5.0 ranks, Steve
capped off his phenomenal season by winning the NMRA World Finals at
Beech Bend Raceway in Bowling Green, KY and taking one last swipe at the
record books during the Ford Mustang Fun Ford World Finals at Texas
Motorplex in Ennis, TX. At Bowling Green, he qualified the Halprin/Grebeck
Mustang in the number 3 position and went on to take the big win over a
red-lighting Don Walsh Jr. by virtue of a 6.780 pass at 208.36. Running
in lighter FFW trim, he then went on to Texas, where he pulled another
performance gem out of his hat, cranking out a sparkling 6.652 at 211.36
in the first round, and backing it up with a 6.673 at 213.57 in a
semi-final bye run. He lost in a tough final against Bill Rimmer Jr.,
but he had made his point, underlined it, and added a couple of
exclamation points just for good measure. a
d v e r t i s e m e n t It
wasn't all smooth sailing for the Halprin/Grebeck gang, however, as the
very descriptive name of the awesome 'Stang would suggest. Steve
candidly admitted that during much of the early going with the new
combination, the car controlled him rather than the other way around.
"It was at the FFW event at Bristol Dragway in early August that
the name was bestowed on the car for the first time," he recalled.
"We had been experiencing some wicked tire shake with it, but
during qualifying down there it just went off the scale. It through me
around in the cockpit so violently that I experienced a 'gray out',
which nearly knocked me out cold. We broke the wheelie bars and the rear
end housing, the doors wound up on the outside of the front clip and the
belly pan was out of it - basically, we broke anything that could be
broken. After that episode, one of the ladies who hangs out with us, and
does some of our PR, said that the car was a 'psychotic 'SOB' and before
long the name fit." And that's mild compared to what the opposition
calls it, I'll wager.
This
guy is so busy, and involved in so many projects that it's tough to keep
track. In addition to everything else that went on after the turn of the
Century, Steve teamed up with Leo Utley of Augusta, Georgia to build,
and then drive, the '94 Pontiac Firebird that went to the NSCA Outlaw
Street championship in 2000. In a dramatic showdown, Grebeck had to beat
perennial tough guy Marc Dantoni in the final round of the season's last
event to grab the gold, and he made it happen. Also
during this time, Steve Grebeck Racecraft Engineering was building
Mustangs and street-legal cars for some of the major players in the
game, including Pat Musi, Ross Stomp, Marc Dantoni, Tony Christian, Bob
Adler, Randy Eakins, Billy Glidden, Mike Moran, Tim Kauffman, Erin
Cheffer, Rob Golobo, Greg Blevins Jr., Josh McClenethan and many more.
These days, his name is as highly regarded amongst his peers as are
those of McAmis, Bickel, Haas and Jones. And not only does Grebeck build
complete cars, but he provides a long list of services to racers, many
who come to him for clutch or chassis consulting, as well as just about
anything that will help them run fast and straight. According to Steve,
"I try to support anybody who needs help. Whether they drive one of
my cars or not, I've been under all of them because sooner or later they
all come through here. We have a small shop, but we pay attention to the
details, and our customers appreciate that. I don't want to grow any
larger for the simple reason that I can better control everything that
goes on, and keep the quality where it needs to be."
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