John Jay Li

The Blogs

  • Loyalty to a site?

    If you didn’t know what was going on, judging by the posts on Facebook, you’d think someone had died. Long form eulogies for a patch of concrete and of good times past, photos from the wayback machine, people swapping memories, and so on. The news came out not too recently that Oscoda was no longer […]

  • Done with autocross

    There’s a common refrain: “A bad day of fishing beats a good day at the office.” This phrase can be applied to many different pleasurable activities; for example, one can say: “A bad day of racing beats a good day at the office.” And so there I was, sitting in grid with my (no longer […]

  • Goodbye, Barry

    I learned this week that Barry Rowe has passed away. I’m sure the fact that he’s gone will hit me like a ton of bricks in a little while; my mind is still in denial about the whole thing and cannot yet accept it. Goodbyes are never easy. A goodbye whose chance to be has […]

  • The problem with the Oscoda Pro

    What to do about the 2022 Oscoda Pro Solo? The National Office has emailed me asking if Detroit Region was up for putting on the Oscoda Pro Solo for 2022. Things will be different this year, I’m told. Their proposed date for the Oscoda Pro Solo is no longer a back-to-back weekend with the Toledo […]

  • Welcome to the big leagues: how to get faster, faster

    This was originally posted on jleez.net on June 19, 2015. Someone on Facebook asked me where the post went, so I’m reposting this on one of my current blogs. It’s interesting to see how things changed over the past six years. In the time since I wrote this, Ido has continued to run National events, […]

  • Why do I like this car so much?

    I had a 2003 Honda Civic coupe, and it was a reliable but boring daily driver. I replaced it with a 2016 Ford Fiesta ST, which is a lot of fun, but has required the most work I’ve ever had to do for a daily driver. I’ll cut to the chase: outside of maybe the […]

  • Born Fast vs. Learned Fast

    I fell into a long-winded back-and-forth in one of my Facebook chats where we discussed whether or not it was possible for mere mortals to challenge the driving gods. One friend took the stance that innate talent is what separated the driving aliens from the rest of us, while I argued that it was hard […]

  • What’s the value of a race car?

    Not too long ago, there was an H Production VW Scirocco for sale on Bring a Trailer. I briefly flirted with the idea of bringing it home and scrapping most of my motorsports plans for the year to make a bid for the Runoffs at Indy. The day that the auction was set to end, […]

  • The story behind my Tail of the Dragon picture

    Well, this is a good a story as any, and a nice capstone on the year’s time trials season. I’ve been splitting my motorsports attention between autocross and time trials. My original plans at the beginning of the year were to go to all of the National Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) autocross events […]