AutoSportRadio.com 2024 Show for July 10th

AutoSportRadio.com 2024 Show for July 10th - Guests: Kelly Jones and Glenn Timmis
Kelly Jones,
Kelly Jones graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 1989 with degrees in aerospace engineering and Japanese. A collegiate boxer fighting at middleweight, Kelly earned All-American athlete status as a bronze medalist in the 1989 National Collegiate Boxing Championships. Through his 12 years of service Kelly rose to the rank of Major as a decorated F-16 fighter pilot, instructor pilot, and strike mission commander. A graduate of the Air Force F-16 Instructor Course, Electronic Combat Instructor Course, Pacific Air Forces Aviation Crew Enrichment Seminar, and Raytheon Maverick Missile Symposium, Kelly Jones applied his 2,200 hours flight experience in the F-16 to lead, teach, and train dozens of his fellow elite fighter pilots.
Following his career as a combat aviator, Kelly Jones piloted Airbus aircraft for eight years as a commercial airline pilot with FedEx. It was during this time that Kelly transitioned from combat aviation to motorsports, racing cars, karts, and motorcycles internationally while instructing on track with national car clubs and motorsports organizations.
The beginnings of RaceCraft1 took hold in 2008 when Kelly applied his engineering talent to design, develop, and assemble the RaceCraft1 simulators, purpose-built expressly for formal instruction. Kelly harnessed his highly regarded instructor background and racing experience to write the RaceCraft1 curriculum, drawing upon Air Force instructional techniques honed through the hard lessons of more than a century of aviation history. Kelly takes racer development to heart, the same way he personally took to heart the schooling of F-16 pilots under his tutelage and on his wing. He made sure they were more than capable of successfully flying into threat infested target areas, putting ordnance on time on target, then fighting their way out together in 700mph, 9g environments to return home safely every time.
Glen Timmis,
Raised in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Glenn had what some might describe as the perfect childhood. Glenn’s dad traveled five days a week, but his next-door neighbor was Ernie Flowers, the right-fielder for the professional men’s fast-pitch softball team, the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons. Across the street lived Harry Burden, a car salesman who did some race-car driving at the local level.
“I saw some great racing there,” he says. “When that green flag dropped, you held your breath until the end of the race. That was a cool racetrack and different from Indy because you could see all the way around it.”
He traveled to Japan seven times.
“That racetrack was super unique,” he says. “It was essentially on top of a mountain. Honda chopped off the top of the mountain and built a racetrack. It was an engineering marvel.”
Unfortunately, it was destroyed by a tsunami several years ago.
“I saw two cars start to get a little bit out of shape at the end of turn two, so I got on the headset and said, ‘I have two cars,’” Glenn recalls. Then two more. Ultimately, 15 cars were involved in a wreck.
“Then I saw a car in the air and said, ‘Oh, my god,’” Glenn says. “I stepped back away from the fence because I knew there would be flying debris.”
Tragically, Dan Weldon, the 2005 and 2011 Indy 500 champion, perished in the crash. Glenn and his colleagues picked up parts of race cars outside of the fence for nearly an hour.
Glenn’s wife Mary didn’t go to that race, but when she learned that it had been red-flagged due to a bad crash in turn two, she began calling Glenn to be sure he was OK. His daughter Kim recalls a handful of times when she was in a panic, not knowing if her father was hurt.
“There’s an element of danger in this job,” Glenn says. “You don’t take your eyes off of the track and you don’t turn your back on a race car. You don’t dare hesitate in this job. If you do, it could kill you and certainly could kill other people.”
“I like round numbers, and 50 seemed like a good time to go,” he says. Of course, he had no way of knowing that a global pandemic would serve to make his last race so anticlimactic. The 2020 race had no spectators in the stands, and the workers all had to wear masks. His family was certainly disappointed.
“When you see those 11 rows of three cars coming at you, it’s hard to describe the rush,” Glenn says.
Glenn is a member of the Oldtimers, which is for former Indy 500 workers. Members are required to have worked 20 years at the Speedway to be eligible. Glenn helped get the late Arthur Carter (Indiana’s own Tuskegee Airman) into the club. In 2014 Glenn proudly served as guardian for Carter’s Honor Flight to Washington, D.C.
Now that he’s retired, Glenn confides that he sometimes feels irrelevant, but nothing could be further from the truth. He’s beloved by countless people who appreciate him for countless reasons.