Richard Dole has been a professional photographer for over 20 years. While he is known primarily for his work in auto racing, he has photographed a wide variety of major sports including PGA Tour Golf, French Open and U.S. Open Tennis, NFL and NCAA Football, and the Olympics. His assignments have sent him from Bahia, to Barcelona, to Beijing, and virtually everywhere in between. Richard's photographs have graced the pages of publications throughout the world including The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, L'Equipe, Forbes, AutoWeek, Car & Driver, Road & Track, Golf Magazine, Autosport, International Herald Tribune, Bloomberg News, and USA Today. His corporate clients include Michelin, Tequila Patron, Acura, Audi, Ferrari, Maserati, Asprey, American Le Mans Series, Ingersol-Rand, NASCAR, Momo, Lotus, PGA of America, Sun Trust, and Aston Martin. He resides in St. Augustine, Florida with his wife and four daughters.

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I AM a fan of the movie This Is Spinal Tap. And convinced I witnessed a scene from an upcoming sequel staged at the ALMS race at Mid-Ohio this past Saturday. General Motors must have spent some big money on product placement because the Corvette racing team is heavily featured.

The Acura Sports Car Challenge at Mid-Ohio was the coming out party of the new Corvette C6.R GT2 race car. After years of racing virtually against themselves in the GT1 class and destroying all comers with the exception of the UK based Prodrive Aston Martin team, the Pratt & Miller team decided to move to GT2 and race against other factory backed teams including Ferrari, Porsche, BMW and others.

So Mid-Ohio was the debut race for the new car. The Vette is beautifully prepped and prepared by one of the top crews in racing. The only bitch anyone had of the car was the paint scheme. Velocity yellow at the front of the car, and deepest darkest black at the rear. The problem with any black paint scheme is the inability to see any detail in the car's lines, and the blending of the car and the race surface. So photographers hate black. I was told the paint scheme was designed by some wonk at General Motors. I think "designed" is a stretch. The rear end of the car is so bad, one can only suspect the designer was sitting on the toilet, discovered he was out of paper, and decided to....well let's just say the back third of the cars looks like crap. As one of the new owners of GM, I herby approve them to spend a bit of my tax bailout dollars to repaint the back of the race cars.

So for three days in Lexington, Ohio we had the new GT2 car, a new badboys paint scheme and what we thought was new member of the Pratt & Miller crew. He was hard to miss. Tall, built like a linebacker, and a haircut that made you stop and take notice. A 4 inch tall mohawk on the top that blended like tar and molasses into a mullet in the back. Tattoos covered both sides of his shaved head. And he wore a nomex firesuit - all day, every day, while the other crew members wore daily team clothing. Turns out he wasn't a crew member at all, just a friend of the team. His name is Dan Fastuca, a heavy metal guitarist, and according to his website, a member of the Jet Black band and studied under Wendy o Williams of the Plasmatics. Word got out he was going to play the national anthem on his guitar before the start of the ALMS race.

A first glance, this actually makes a lot of sense. Every year the day before the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Pratt & Miller crew member Mike West plays the national anthem on his guitar. It is awesome. A slightly toned down version of Jimi Hendrix played at Woodstock and very respectful. Everyone assumed the Mid-Ohio version would be something similar.

Unfortunately we heard just the opposite. I was standing on the top row of the crowded grandstands at the end of the back stretch setting up a start shot that would show the packed hillside as the cars race through the esses. The PA announcer asked everyone to stand for the national anthem and the jumbo video screen showed Mr. Fastuca on the grid with his Corvette logo, driver autographed, "Starblaster" guitar in hand. He took the microphone and told everyone what a huge Corvette fan he was, how honored was to be wearing Ron Fellows old driving suit and how the guitar would be auctioned off to raise money to fight cancer. And then he started playing.

On his website, Fastuca invited "all you shredders in the Ohio area to come down (to the track) and hang with Dan." It is actually difficult to put into words the sounds we all heard. Just imagine 100 rabid cats simultaneously scratching a chalkboard. It you listened hard enough, you could occasionally pick out a bit of The Star-Spangled Banner, but it was difficult. About half one through it, the speakers cut out and the fans actually started clapping. Unfortunately 10 seconds later, the speakers started working again and we all were forced to listen to the bitter end. On the video screen we saw Fastuca flashing back to his Jet Black glory days, back arched, mohawk flying, the Starblaster completely vertical. Rock on dude. When it all finally and mercifully ended, everyone stood in stunned silence, not one clapped, and finally one person said, "that was the worst rendition since Roseanne Barr."

At the scene of the crime. at the head of the grid, stood members of the Ohio National Guard holding the American flag. Standing close by were Erik Berkman, President of Honda Performance Development, Kurt Antonius, Assistant Vice President of Public Relations for American Honda Motor Company, and Scott Atherton, President and CEO of the American Le Mans Series. They were standing at the top of the grid because Honda and Acura were the sponsors of both the IRL and ALMS races and the place was packed with Honda employees and guests. All were first hand witnesses to the Honda/Acura party crasher. A real life scene straight out of This Is Spinal Tap.

How exactly this was allowed to happen is anyone's guess. The ALMS took the word of the Corvette folks. Apparently the videos on the Fastuca website didn't sound any alarms. The video was never mentioned or viewed by Scott Atherton. The more important question and what in the world were the Corvette folks thinking? While they are friends and fans of Fastuca, what made them think his rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner was appropriate? Did Doug Fehan, Program Manager of Corvette Racing approve of this? Fehan is the face of GM's Vette Racing program, the man who is front and center on the Le Mans 24 Hours podium (and I mean literally front and center) waving the American Flag for the car company whose "The Heartbeat of America" slogan still rings in every red- blooded American's ears. Did he think this was cool? Or appropriate?

At sunrise in 1814, imprisoned on the frigate "Surprise," seeing a battered flag flying over a battle torn Fort McHenry, Francis Scott Key penned the Star-Spangled Banner. This past Saturday, Dan Fastuca surprised everyone at Mid-Ohio by shredding our national anthem. General Motors owns an apology to the American Le Mans Series, the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, the American Honda Motor Company, and the fans and families that were forced to listen to this rendition.

Tapped out.

I Am.

August 2009