A gaggle of Homewood-Flossmoor Excessive Faculty college students—dubbed the H-F Auto Membership—have been engaged on a 1997 Ford Mustang drag racing automotive for a number of years. After making its post-COVID racing debut throughout the 2022 season at close by Byron Dragway (above), the membership has been compelled to shelve its efforts any more. The scholars can’t work on the automotive, drive it, or race it anymore, as a result of their insurance coverage supplier dropped their protection.
At first of this faculty 12 months, it was made identified to the scholars and their senior advisor that the insurer would now not supply the coverage it had been coated underneath. After months of looking, no different insurer is all in favour of providing a coverage for the membership and its race automotive.
“The H-F Enterprise Workplace has been working to safe insurance coverage for the H-F racing staff since final spring. H-F’s insurance coverage dealer has reached out to 19 markets that serve Illinois and all have declined to offer a bid as a result of a highschool racing staff is just too area of interest of a market,” Carla Erdey, director of communications for Homewood-Flossmoor Excessive Faculty, defined.
“It seems that the opposite race groups in Illinois race as a company staff that adopts a college,” Erdey continued. “The insurance coverage dealer has additionally reached out to eight different states and none of these are all in favour of insuring a highschool racing staff.”
The racing membership offers college students with a number of distinctive abilities they’d be onerous pressed to seek out in different venues. There are such a lot of STEM-related functions of automotive know-how, plus delicate abilities like staff 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 youngsters to hone their automotive passions towards a typical objective of going quick. Sadly, that additionally means the Mustang is off-limits and might’t be a lot as touched till the college can discover an insurer keen to take it on.
For the reason that challenge 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 attain a pace of as much as 100 mph” which I assume means it has run a lure pace of 100 miles per hour, as a result of a inventory 1997 Mustang GT had a prime 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 staff to maintain them operating. And possibly with sufficient money injection to get them into the 12s.
