What's In A Name/Number?

NMS Top Picks, #86 and #77

One fun part of autocross or any car event is picking your car's number. Part of the decision on what number to use could be your favorite driver's number, your birthday, your favorite number, or maybe your winning lottery picks! If you start like NMS did with putting numbers on your car with blue painter's tape, it doesn't take too long to figure out that you really want to use easy straight line numbers, like 11 or 1. Seven isn't too hard to do, so I like sevens. Fours that use straight lines are pretty easy to do also. Sixes and nines? Forget about it!

#374

If you're a NASCAR fan you know your favorite driver's number better than your birthday, and the announcers talk about cars by number as often as by the name of the driver. Number wise, Brian has used 86 on his Miata a lot, and on the Fiesta ST (as seen below, modified with #286 for a second driver). Since he's pretty old, I'm going to bet that this number has something to do with his birthday. August 6th? Eighth of June? Birth year? Yeah, something like that!

#86 AND #286, Two Numbers in One if You Move the Magnet!

On the Lemons Coronet, once it had an awesome PURPLE paint job, the car raced as #155. While there might be some cool story about that number, for now it remains a mystery. Personally, I think they just scribbled some X's and O's on the race application and went with what the judges thought the number was. It looks good with 155!

#155 Does Lemons Racing

My 77 was a good number, easy to remember, easy to read if you're dyslexic (I guess), and popular with palindrome fans. It also happens to be the number of Finnish Formula 1 driver Valtteri Bottas, so that's not too bad! But, I picked it since it's when I graduated from high school, so now if you're good at math or have a big calculator you could figure out how old I am.

#77 in the GS Class Days, 2014-2016

In 2018 NMS North moved to New York and signed up to autocross with the New York Region of the SCCA, so when I signed up number 77 wasn't available, so they ended up giving me a new number for the year. The random number generator on line gave me #374, so there's not much magic or cool about that number, but it will do for now! After two events of making 374 with blue painters tape (on both sides of the car no less), I ordered a new set of numbers on a magnetic sign from the friendly folks at SoloPerformance. This will cut a few minutes off of car-prep time for every autocross, so that should give me more time to drive faster! I like the magnets, since you can just slap them on the side of the car and you're done...unless you have a fiberglass Corvette or you can invent a type of magnet that sticks to plastic! After the event, just take the magnet off and throw it in the back of the car. At home in the garage I like to just toss them on the metal garage door, and then I can find them when the next event rolls around, plus they dress up the garage a bit. Who doesn't need more car stuff in their garage? It's like more stickers on your car, it all makes you go faster!

#374 New Magnets Day!