Jim Derhaag

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Jim Derhaag
Born	December 17, 1950 Shakopee, Minnesota
💼 Occupation

James Edward Derhaag (December 17, 1950) was driver, team owner, chassis builder and body constructor, then owner in the Trans Am Series. He raced as a driver from 1981 to 1997, competing in one more race in 2010. He began Derhaag Motorsports in 1983 and sold it in January 2018. During that period, he purchased B&E Fiberglass in 2009 to form Derhaag Company. He was instrumental in restarting the TA series in 2009, forming and heading up the ownership group in 2011 before selling his stock in Trans Am Race Company in August 2017.

Early Automotive Experience

Derhaag was born and raised in Shakopee, Minnesota, attending St. Mark’s Catholic School and graduating from Shakopee High School in 1968.

He bought his first go-kart at age 12 and traded it for a faster go-kart when he was 13. At age 14, he traded that go-kart for an orange 1938 Chevy Coupe. Derhaag spent time working as a pit crew member at local tracks from the age of 16. When the opportunity presented itself, he would use his street cars to drag race.

Professional driving experience

In late 1971/early 1972, he built his first late-model stock car to race the 1972 season at Raceway Park in Shakopee, Minnesota, and Elko Speedway in Elko New Market, Minnesota. He had racked up three wins by the end of the season, including a qualifying race at Wisconsin Dells Raceway Park, Juneau County, Wisconsin. He continued to race the car in 1973, selling it in the fall to buy a new Camaro from Bemco Engineering. With that and then a Camaro, he raced in the Midwest until 1975, when he moved to Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.

In the spring of 1976, he returned to Minnesota and bought another Bemco Camaro that he ran until 1979. He paid the bills by managing a speed shop (Minnesota Auto Specialties). He drove his first TA race in 1981 at Brainerd International Raceway. His engine builder, Myron Cottrell, convinced Derhaag to convert a stock car chassis to a road race car. The team completed the work over the winter of 1980-81 as Derhaag started a national mail order company named Auto America. The car won the Uncola National at Brainerd; the car ran and broke at TA at Brainerd in the summer of 1981. In 1982, he put together his first purpose-built road race car and ran TA at Road America and various SCCA Club races.

Driving and team experience

On January 1, 1983, Derhaag left Auto America and started building two new TA cars he would use to compete that year. During the 1983 season, Derhaag finished every race in the TA Series that season, finishing 13th at the first race and improving by one position each of the next 12 races to end with the best finish of sixth place and also finished sixth place in points. He was the first driver to finish all races in the history of the series. Losing Rookie of the Year title to Willie T. Ribbs, he received the Iron Man award from series sponsor Budweiser.

Derhaag went with Lozano Brothers Engines in late 1985 and their engine building skills offered more reliability and the chance to not only improve in standings but to pick up John Woodhead as a sponsor. He agreed to purchase a new Protofab car for the 1987 season and hired Bruce Sparrman as team manager. Sparrman, former USAC Rookie of the Year, had raced short track with Derhaag in the 70s.

With better equipment, Derhaag was running second in the championship by mid-season. Derhaag won a career high of second place at the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg to end 1987 on a high note.

The market crash of that year ended JFW Motorsports but Woodhead was kind enough to make it possible for Derhaag to purchase all the equipment he would need to stay in the series. He raced in 1988-1989, achieving several podium appearances.

In the fall of 1992, Derhaag met Pat Lazzaro, a racer and PR specialist who had secured sponsorship from NO Touch Tire Care to run in the Dodge Shelby Can AM series that ran with TA for all but one event. Derhaag Motorsports built and campaigned a car for her, with which she had some success until 1993. Lazzaro added a PR machine to Derhaag Motorsports and became team manager.

Derhaag became a fulltime team owner in 1998. He said, “Racing was changing. My mentor, Tom Gloy, and I talked about my transition. He had already made the transition from driver to team owner. Walter Payton was also racing in TA and we became friends. I asked him about a question that haunted me, ‘When I was done driving race cars, what replaced that?’ Walter was very wise. He said you cannot replace it. If you try, you will be unhappy. You simply move on to what comes next, keep all the good stuff and put it in a box. Let the BS float away. He poked me in the chest and said I should go out at the top of my game.”

By 1998, Derhaag had completed the transition out of the role of driver, and his focus was on helping other drivers across the finish line by renting the cars and track services they needed at select races and offering his years of racing expertise. The team enjoyed success, with Chris Neville finishing every race and winning the award for most laps completed during the 1998 season, in fact missing only one lap of the total available.

Simon Gregg and Steve Pelke joined Derhaag Motorsports in 1999. Pelke would leave after one season and Gregg would start a long relationship with Derhaag Motorsports, remaining with the team until the end of 2020.

In 2000, the team ran a second car at the request of Chevrolet at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park (then called Mosport Motorsports Park) Ontario, Canada). In that car, Kenny Wilden ran five races that year, including Mosport, Road America, Las Vegas, and San Diego, winning the Simple Green Clean Sweep award at Laguna Seca by qualifying on the pole, setting the fastest race, lap, leading the most laps, and winning the race as well as the all-time largest TA purse.

Derhaag Motorsports started construction on its own chassis as well as the new C5 Corvette bodywork, debuting the first two cars at the first TA race at Sebring in 2001, driven by Gregg and Justin Bell. Developing the cars over the year, Bell finished second at Mid Ohio, won Laguna Seca and the finale at the Houston Grand Prix. In 2002, Gregg continued the series with the team with Bell racing select events. In the off season, Derhaag Motorsports began construction of a Grand Am GTO Corvette for the 24 Hours of Daytona as 2003 was the first year for the Daytona prototype, billed as the fastest class in Grand Am. The driver lineup for the race was four-time winner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans Derek Bell, his son Justin, Wilden, and Gregg. Surprising everyone, Bell outqualified all prototypes and took the pole position. In the best judgement of Grand Am, he started behind all porotypes on the grid for the race, leading GTO for a while and ultimately retiring with engine failure at about 13 hours into the race. Going to Daytona in the fall for the three-hour finale, Gregg and Bell showed everyone the way around the track and won GTO, actually being faster than the prototypes.

Revival of the TA Series

In the fall of 2005, Derhaag was at the Kyalami Grand Prix Circuit in Sandton, South Africa when he received the phone call that the TA Series had been discontinued. With contracts already signed for the 2006 season, he bought a Grand Am prototype team, complete with truck, trailer, and everything needed to race at Grand Am from Chris Bingham, closing the deal within an hour. Bingham also signed on as a driver. Derhaag Motorsports ran the 2006 season but the fit was not good for the team. In 2007, Derhaag Motorsports ran Gregg and other drivers in SCCA Nationals and, in 2008, the team continued running with SCCA while Derhaag and Jim Julow, the then president of SCCA, tried to create a format for the return of the TA Series. By fall, Julow had a proposal that Derhaag Motorsports would fund SCCA as the TA Series would come back in 2009 as a hybrid series with the high profile SCCA Nationals. For the 2010 season, SCCA spun back to Pro Racing with Bob Wildberger as its president. In that same year, Derhaag suggested adding a TA2 class, initially facing push back as he heard, “No one will ever build those cars.” The class would ultimately prove to be an integral part of TA’s future.

Things did not go as well as Pro Racing had hoped and Wildberger resigned late that year. The interim president of Pro Racing, in 2011, was Tom Campbell. At the first driver’s meeting, it appeared to Derhaag that there was no interest in continuing TA past the current year. Shortly thereafter, he held a meeting in his office with Campbell, TA Series Manager Randy Hembrey, and John Claggett, long-time former TA vice president. Derhaag proposed a long-term lease and taking the series over using SCCA sanction managed by Trans Am Race Company. The group of men negotiated the framework for this contract, effective in 2012. At Road America, Derhaag called a meeting of key players, drivers, and owners in TA, announcing the TA Series would end in 2011 unless the negotiated agreement was executed. Derhaag promised to put a number of dollars into a hat, asking each person present to do the same, “I wouldn’t ask any of you to do something I wouldn’t do twice as much.” The funds were raised by Tony Ave, Gregg, Doug Harrington, DJ Jans, Mike Miller; Claggett was hired and TA Race Company took over the series in 2012. TA2 took off as a popular class and car counts increased rapidly. Derhaag Motorsports ran Dave Copham and Gregg that year, the latter winning at Lime Rock Park and Mid Ohio, ultimately clinching the championship. In 2016, Gregg won Mid Ohio again and VIRginia International Raceway and the series continued to grow in terms of participants and fans as well as a TV package. Mickey “Mary” Wright drove with Derhaag Motorsports from 2014 to 2017, joining Gregg, and the series continued its upward trajectory. In 2015, Fellows won his 100th race at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, as Wilden had done in 2011.

Tony Parella joined the TA Race Company ownership group in 2016. After heated controversy among the owners, Parella, Miller, and Jans acquired the shares held by Derhaag in summer of 2017. Derhaag continued to run Derhaag Motorsports through the remainder of 2017, selling Derhaag Motorsports and Derhaag Company, the composite business, to Troy Benner on January 2, 2018. Derhaag remained with the team on a three-year retainer, attending races as a consultant, an agreement that ended in December 2020. By then, Derhaag Motorsports had produced 18 chassis, including the C5, C6, C7, and Camaro. All of these cars are still racing around the world today.

Personal life

Derhaag is now enjoying the hobbies he holds dear such as travel and hunting as well as spending time with friends and family.

Derhaag Motorsports Drivers

Tony Ave

Derek Bell

Justin Bell

Chris Bingham

Pete Brallier

Darin Brassfield

Paul Dallenbach

Ron Fellows

Bill Gray

Doug Harrington

Dick Kantrud

Pat Lazzaro

Tim McAdam

Johnny Miller

Peter Mohrhauser

Chris Neville

Steve Pelke

Randy Rhulman

Dorsey Schroeder

Kenny Wilden

Mickey Wright

References

This article "Jim Derhaag" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Jim Derhaag. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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