In the past few days, the Republican Presidential candidates have made outrageous bets with each other.
 
Rick Perry accused Mitt Romney of removing a line from the reprinted edition of his book in a passage about his Massachusetts health-care coverage program. In response, Romney wagered $10,000 that Perry is wrong about that.
 
Two days later, candidate Newt Gingrich bet a mere $10 that Romney wouldn't "give back all the money he's earned on bankrupting companies and laying off employees."
 
Then conservative radio talk-show host Michael Savage, calling Gingrich "a fat, old, white man" who would lose the election if the GOP nominated him, offered Gingrich $1 million to drop out of the race.
 
Not in response to any of that but with the same creative flair, 73-year-old sportsman drag racer Al Vanis, of Englishtown, N.J., threw out his own proposal to potential car owners.
 
For a few bucks, he placed an ad in the classified section of Raceway News, Old Bridge Township Raceway Park's newspaper. Here's his pitch:

In the past few days, the Republican Presidential candidates have made outrageous bets with each other.
 
Rick Perry accused Mitt Romney of removing a line from the reprinted edition of his book in a passage about his Massachusetts health-care coverage program. In response, Romney wagered $10,000 that Perry is wrong about that.
 
Two days later, candidate Newt Gingrich bet a mere $10 that Romney wouldn't "give back all the money he's earned on bankrupting companies and laying off employees."
 
Then conservative radio talk-show host Michael Savage, calling Gingrich "a fat, old, white man" who would lose the election if the GOP nominated him, offered Gingrich $1 million to drop out of the race.
 
Not in response to any of that but with the same creative flair, 73-year-old sportsman drag racer Al Vanis, of Englishtown, N.J., threw out his own proposal to potential car owners.
 
For a few bucks, he placed an ad in the classified section of Raceway News, Old Bridge Township Raceway Park's newspaper. Here's his pitch:    
 

RIDE WANTED: No "hired gun" touring professional in drag racing would make the following statement: "If I lose a round of eliminations due to a reaction time worse/higher than .029 or red (minus .001 or worse), I will pay a penalty of $100 for that round loss." They wouldn’t make that statement, because nobody is consistently that good and unforeseeable mechanical and physical circumstances are always present. Al Vanis is looking for a ride in a consistent and well-maintained "foot brake" race car. If I determine that the race car offered is as described, I will pay the owner of it $100 for any round in eliminations that I lose by fouling or from a reaction time of .030 or worse/higher. Judging the "stripe" is an educated guess, and nobody is better at it than a racer who has been doing just that for 45 years. Make me pay!! Call Al Vanis - 732-536-8210.
 

"I used to see other drivers requesting rides. It seems like it's old hat, so I figured that I had to do something to stand out so that people would take notice," Vanis said. He said he hoped he could reach those who don't see a copy of Raceway News simply "by word of mouth -- because people know me, the word would get around."
 
He said, "I'm about ready to give up racing with my own car. I'm almost 74 years old. I AM young, actually."
 
Vanis retired from Merck eight years ago after 37 and a half years with the company, first as janitor, then filling all sorts of roles, from fork-lift operator to executive chauffeur.
 
Some time ago, he took out an ad in National Dragster, seeking a ride in either a Stock or Super Stock race car. He received two replies, one offering a gasser, the other a Pro Modified. However, he turned them down, saying, "My forte is foot brake racing."
 
Vanis said he hasn't receive a response to his latest ad yet but isn't expecting one immediately. He's ready to back up his claims when someone calls, though.
 
"I have a definite system I've been using for a lot of years to back up my claims in the ad," Vanis said of his latest proposal. And he had a definite way of framing his offer.
 
"If you notice the way I worded it . . . [that] gives me room to pull an .030 light and still win a round and not have to pay," he said.
 
"Even if I would have to pay out occasionally $100 and it would attract somebody to my ad," Vanis said, "it would be a heck of a lot cheaper than what I've been doing, trying to pay people to maintain my cars and not having my cars do the job they should do.
 
"I have a lot of confidence in my driving," he said. "I just don't have confidence in paying people to do the work on my car and having the car let me down. That's probably it in a nutshell.
 
"I have spent countless hundreds, thousands of dollars over what I consider a short period of time. I have a truck. I have a trailer. I've had three race cars at one time. Maintaining these and being asked to go to different races . . . I've gone out to California, I've gone out to Indy (I won in Indy in '74) . . . ," Vanis said. "I can't even count the number of cars I've raced all over the United States. There's maybe 100 of them. I've been racing 45 years."
 
He said finally he's looking for a more efficient way to go racing. And he's making sure a potential new business partner understands that he is a minimal risk.
 
After Vanis had been on the sidelines for a considerable time, he re-entered the mix and won at his home track in 2003 in the LeMans he had just bought. Moreover, he mentioned, his average reaction time that day was a .015 for seven rounds of eliminations. That included two perfect lights (.000).
 
That statistic, he said, "is just to give you an idea of how confident I am, because I've been doing this all my life."
 
He started in Pure Stock in 1965 at Old Bridge Raceway, a 16th-mile oval track that for drag racers had, he recalled, "three lights hanging on a wire." A year after Vinny Napp and Co. opened the gates at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park in '65, Vanis was there first with his '64 Galaxy convertible that he said "was a real eye-catcher," one he "bought for dating" and modified slightly. His second vehicle was an extremely fast Cobra Jet Mustang. "I did really, really well with that car," he said.
 
"Everybody else was letting air out of their tires in Pure Stock and they were spinning," Vanis recalled. "I pumped my back tires up to 40-45 pounds, because the tread going across gave me a lot more patch. I learned how to torque the motor up just a little bit. As soon as the nose would come up, I mashed the accelerator. And that's how I got what I did. I was always innovative.
 
"I was always really, really into racing," said. He continually studied and wondered, "How can I be better than other people? If you follow the crowd, you're not going to get any better than they are."
 
One area in which he said he's distinctive is how he approaches the Christmas Tree.
 
"I don't read the lights like other people do," Vanis said. "For example, they wait until they see the light and they react as fast as they can. I don't.  I don't use blinders, either. I like to know what's coming. When that light starts, in my mind I have it that when I feel that beat in my foot, that's when I'm going to react -- not before, not after. As a result, it's about one and a half to two-hundredths of a second slower than what I can do or what most other people can do. My reaction as a 74-year-old is about like [that of] a 30-year-old.
 
"I found that to be more consistent, so you won't foul, so you won't choke. You have it fixed in your mind that when you see that light, you've got to feel that beat and then you've got to go, no matter who's alongside you of, no matter if it's morning or night," he said. "It get to be mechanical after awhile.
 
His system, he said, means he consistently and comfortably can cut lights in the .00 range. He contended that any reaction time better than a .005 "is pure luck." Staging procedures play a large part of it, as do your RPM. Even his own two perfect lights at Englishtown in that 2003 victory, he said, "were luck."
 
But this ad in Raceway News wasn't luck. It was marketing genius.