Interview with
Mark Beacom
by Patt Buell
Published May 1, 2004
I arrived at Beacom's house for Mark's interview. Shayne, his wife, told me he was in back in the other garage. The "other garage" will hold at least 8 cars and has 1,000 square feet of office space. My first thought was "Wow!" - A racer's dream.
I found Mark (a lot of you know him by his nickname, Bubba) working on his race car - taping it for painting later. So I interviewed him right there.
He told me he started out in this sport by running the SCCA solo at the Omaha MotorSports Spree in 1985 or 1986 and that’s the first time he had heard of the club and the type of events we did. He ran this solo in a 1972 Vega GT Wagon. "I wasn't very cool, but it was fun. It was a silly, silly autocross car with a whip attenna and it would flip back and forth and whip the pylons all over."
Next he ran a Hare & Hound Rally - "I didn’t even know what one was, but by the end I was hooked. It was fun!" Mark joined the NRSCCA in August, 1986. He claims, "I guess this makes me one of the old guys now."
"I eventually bought a Mustang for Solos. In fact at one time I had 12 Mustangs, of course some were just parts cars." He added, "And the Lord knew I needed a lot of parts."
I asked him how he got into club racing. He replied, "In February, 1992 I received a phone call." The voice said, "Hello Mark. This is Frank Safranek. I was wondering what you are doing on March 21st?"
Mark said he told Frank he was doing nothing as far as he knew. Frank answered, "Oh, then I guess this means you don't want to go with us to Hallet, as crew?" He said he replied, "Hey, wait a minute. Crew? Sure I'll go!"
Mark said at that time he had no idea what he was getting into. This was Frank's first driver school. The crew was also a bunch of first timers; Mark, Tim White and Paul Brown. Mark added, "What did I know about road racing? Well, I knew this guy that autocrossed an IT car, whatever that meant."
Because of that weekend Mark purchased a 1983 Mustang in September 1992. He bought it from Gary Shade in Bellevue (who now races Vipers). "I was on the track by 1993."
At the NRSCCA Annual Awards banquet in 1995, Mark Beacom was the first member to win the George Gunther Memorial Regional Driver Trophy. It was presented to him by George's son Michael Gunther.
In the mid-1990s Mark and several other NRSCCA members, helped organize about 5 years of the Omaha Mini Grand Prix (a race with go-karts) run in the downtown Omaha area. The events were run for the National Arthritis Foundation in many large cities and sanctioned, nationwide, by the SCCA. The proceeds went for arthritis research.
Through the years, Mark has been very active in the NRSCCA. He has organized autoshows such as the 1st Annual MotorSport Convention and Exposition at the Holiday Inn Convention center and several other shows at the Omaha Auditorium and the Mini Grand Prix show.
Mark has often finished in the top ten list of activity points in NRSCCA. He also put on the annual American Sedan Rallies locally, with the help of his friends. He, Frank Safranek and Tim White took turns being eventmaster for these events in the late 1990s.
By 1997 he was very much a club racer in A Sedan but he had his problems. He hit the wall at Heartland. From seeing the photos, you could say he made a real impression on the wall. (Sorry about the pun Mark).
Mark wrote a letter to Sports Car magazine after his mishap. This is an excerpt from the letter: "On lap 16, of Sunday's 16 lap regional race, I was in 3rd with a Mustang and a Camaro on my tail. As I approached turn 7a, I realized I had NO brakes and with no warning the pedal dropped to the floor. I attempted some evasive action to avoid collecting up the cars I was running with and I managed to get the car off the track. But I was out of room and I impacted the outside concrete wall at a high rate of speed on the driver's side of my car. I got out of the car okay and unhurt."
"Then the magic started to happen. After the dust settled I realized what this SCCA thing was all about. Not only are the workers, officials and competitors highly skilled but they were friends to fall back on at a very difficult time. Not only did everyone do their assigned jobs, helping me out of the car, making sure I was safe, checking the car for fire, and the impact to my helmet; not to mention loading my car on the trailer and returning the 'found' pieces. They were generally concerned for my safety, health and feelings."
By the end of 1997 Mark and group headed for Gateway at St. Louis. He says, "His co-driver, Ray Anderson, got off in the mud on Saturday. The car was really covered and Ray could hardly see to pit. We tried window cleaner - too much mud. I jumped the wall and brought back the hose and squirted off the windshield. It wasn't coming off."
Ray said, "I think it's on the INSIDE." So we hosed inside too. Better! On Sunday, Mark finished 3rd.
Through the years, Mark has written many fun stories of his racing adventures, for the Exhaust Notes (which will eventually be included at this website).
One of his adventures was coming home from a race. The trailer was smoking and they pulled over. "We found we had a broken U-bolt on the rear axle. We wedged a couple of jack stand parts into the spring shackles to give us enough clearance. The trailer was a little tail happy but drivable."
"Somewhere north of Kansas City, a kindly State Trooper pulled us over to tell me that he had two reports on us. One, that we were drunk and weaving all over the road, and two, that we were trying to run people off the road with our trailer." Mark added "Ain't racing great!"
"That particular weekend had put me to the test. I had all but given up. I had, in three months, blown 3 motors, the third on that very weekend. I had hit the wall with the car in qualifying, lost a radiator in the motorhome on the return trip, as well as the trailer incident."
After this Mark felt like quitting but, from out of the blue, he received a call from George Anderson in Hastings. George is also a racer in all kinds of venues. He offered to help Mark and they have been good friends ever since. He is one of Mark's race sponsors and a big supporter. Mark's other sponsor is Auction Solutions. (Did you know that Mark is, also, a professional auctioneer and certified bilingual?)
Mark has raced at both Gateways (the old and the new track), Blackhawk, Heartland, Mountain View, Pueblo, Hallet and MAM (MidAmerica Mortorplex) and has been an instructor at Elkhart (Road America) for the North Woods Shelby Club.
Mark is still racing A Sedan. You can find him at MAM on the track or in Tech. He has a National Race Tech license. Look him up! He's a fun guy to talk to and has many, many stories to tell!
