An interview with John Heinricy

This is another interview that I did with John Heinricy for the Detroit Region SCCA Newsletter.  Yet again, I hope you like it.

Detroit Region SCCA member, John Heinricy is a car guy.  He is a gear head of the first degree.  At 8 years old, Mr. Heinricy started driving a 55 Pontiac around the backyard.  At 11, he was rebuilding small engines to motorize his bicycles.  He grew up to get a degree in automotive engineering and shortly thereafter got a job with Chevrolet as a test engineer.  In the early days of his career, John got shuffled through GM’s racing R&D, chassis development, and then spent a period of time at the Milford proving grounds.  During development for the Chevy Citation X-11, the racing bug hit John in a major way.  He started racing at 36 years old, and has since won 15 national titles, has three FIA international speed records, and has posted several hot laps at the Nurburgring including a 7:59.32 set in a Cadillac CTS-V, and a 9:02 in a Cobalt SS turbo on a wet track.  We sat down with John for a one on one interview to introduce him to you.

Open Exhaust:  What have you been keeping yourself busy with since your retirement last October?

John Heinricy:  Since my retirement after almost 39 years at GM, I've been much busier than I expected, which is a good thing as far as I am concerned. Right now I'm on a plane from Florida where I was working at the Barrett Jackson auction.  I have a business, Heinrocket Inc, which I started about 10 years ago.  It encompasses vehicle development and testing with an emphasis on optimizing system integration.  I do this for both street and race vehicles and work for both companies and individuals. An example of this is my work with Hennessey Performance Engineering on their new Corvette ZR1 and CTS V models. I just drove their mildly tuned ZR1 to a 197 mph standing mile run at the Texas Mile. I also do one-on-one data driven and experience based driver coaching.  I continue to work with Joe Aquilante at Phoenix Performance Inc. in Pennsylvania, it is such a professionally run business. I recently had a speaking engagement at the New Jersey Motorsports Park during a weekend track event.  My idea of relaxing includes staying very active.

OE:  What are your plans for this year’s Runoffs?
JH:  Racing plans for 2009? Tom Aquilante’s A Sedan Firebird is likely. It will be a challenge sorting out the new rules in AS to have a competitive combination.
I won't rule out T1 and T3 yet either.  An occasional romp in a World Challenge or Rolex GT with Phoenix Performance is a possibility, also.

OE:  Having won 11 Runoff titles with GM vehicles, will you ever try to race anything from another manufacturer?
JH:  I certainly have a bias towards GM cars, especially ones that I personally worked on, which is almost all of them, but I wouldn't rule out other makes. I would look forward to trying others.

OE:  Over the several years you worked with General Motors, what was your favorite experience?

JH:  Reflecting on the last 39 years, my favorite experience was the start up of High Performance Vehicle Operations and the GM Performance Division. This was about as rewarding as it could get. All the engineers were so dedicated to giving their all to achieving our goals. It was overwhelming.

OE:  Finally, what is it like to drive a sub-8 minute lap of the Nurburgring in a full sized rear wheel drive sedan?

JH:  By far the biggest challenge to running fast laps at the Nurburgring is, first, thoroughly learning the track, and then thoroughly learning a particular vehicle on the track. Not many have the opportunity to do this.  It took me 75 laps to feel like I was now learning to go fast versus learning which corner was next. This was without the help of Playstation! 75 laps in a C5 Z06 was 15 tanks of fuel. I now have over 1000 laps there.
The CTS V has been so well developed by the team working on it that it was a dream to drive. It has excellent dynamic capabilities. I felt like I was being taken along for the ride!