A gaggle of Homewood-Flossmoor High School college students—dubbed the H-F Auto Club—have been engaged on a 1997 Ford Mustang drag racing automotive for a number of years. After making its post-COVID racing debut in the course of the 2022 season at close by Byron Dragway (above), the membership has been pressured to shelve its efforts any longer. The college students can’t work on the automotive, drive it, or race it anymore, as a result of their insurance coverage supplier dropped their protection.
At the beginning of this college yr, it was made identified to the scholars and their senior advisor that the insurer would now not supply the coverage it had been lined below. After months of looking, no different insurer is interested by providing a coverage for the membership and its race automotive.
“The H-F Business Office has been working to secure insurance for the H-F racing team since last spring. H-F’s insurance broker has reached out to 19 markets that serve Illinois and all have declined to provide a bid because a high school racing team is too niche of a market,” Carla Erdey, director of communications for Homewood-Flossmoor High School, defined.
“It appears that the other race teams in Illinois race as a corporate team that adopts a school,” Erdey continued. “The insurance broker has also reached out to eight other states and none of those are interested in insuring a high school racing team.”
The racing membership offers college students with a number of distinctive abilities they’d be arduous pressed to seek out in different venues. There are so many STEM-related functions of automotive expertise, plus comfortable abilities like crew constructing and interpersonal communication. It’s a completely distinctive program within the state, because it operates independently from the college’s auto tech courses, permitting children to hone their automotive passions towards a typical aim of going quick. Unfortunately, that additionally means the Mustang is off-limits and may’t be a lot as touched till the college can discover an insurer keen to take it on.
Since the venture started in 2016, pupil volunteer members of the membership have revamped the automotive’s engine, transmission, suspension, brakes, and electrical system, prepped it for racing, and despatched it down the 1320. The H-F Chronicle says it “can reach a speed of up to 100 mph” which I assume means it has run a entice pace of 100 miles per hour, as a result of a inventory 1997 Mustang GT had a high pace of 139. 100 within the traps means this Mustang might be operating within the low 13s, which isn’t so dangerous in any respect.
Hopefully some insurance coverage firm involves their senses and sponsors the volunteer drag crew to maintain them operating. And possibly with sufficient money injection to get them into the 12s.
Source: jalopnik.com