Steve Farkas, Ed Lange, and Don Slevin have selflessly become the face of the Solo program tech team as a result of their 20 years of volunteering to promote the sport they love. Their dedication to the club extends beyond the status quo of volunteering. During the SCCA Pro Solo series, although they were also participating in the event, they would dedicate their time to seamlessly push 225 cars through tech. These three would attend local NNJR solo events just to manage tech while not even running in the events.

During the recent April 16th event this spring, I presented a special award to Steve, Ed, and Don. To prepare to present the awards, I went through two decades of photos to find one of each that stood out. After the trip down memory lane, he thought it best to design a poster using over 30 pictures of cars they each owned and/or driven. It’s funny, as Don said, “Most of the cars I owned, and they drove them.”

I thought I would share a story of how Steve Farkas joined the autox scene: My brother, Mitch, was a member of a band that Steve’s older brother, Tom, played in. One day my brother shared with me that Steve was building a car for the 1 Lap of America; I think it was a ’68 Camaro. I called Steve, and my friend Greg and I drove over to see this Camaro he was building. The car was a serious project and wasn’t going to be done anytime soon. I talked him into coming out to an autox, as it was local and inexpensive. Well, he thought about it for just a few weeks, and he showed up in a Ford Escort ZX2. From that day on he was hooked. Now you can guess the rest of the story.