From Crashing Out To Completion, Stefan Rossi Was An Animal At Sick Week
By Phillip Thomas.
There are certain challenges with the power to redefine your course in life. It’s that primal drive that pulls racers into deeper trials, chasing the dragon through timeslips and dyno runs, hoping to prove something to someone, even if it’s just themselves.
For Stefan Rossi, that challenge came to a head during Sick Week, after years of momentum brought him to the doorstep at Bradenton. Despite everything aligning ahead of the event, a splash of coolant from a failed radiator coupler would quickly throw Rossi’s ’66 Chevy II Nova SS into the wall at over 150mph on day one, and test the resolve of the ACE Racing Engines crew to stay in competition.
The Nova caught our attention first at the Freedom Factory, where its low-key looks were nuanced by the UK plate and yellow-tinted lenses. It’s one of those machines where you know at first glance that a meticulous madman has been at work — something Stefan doesn’t mind owning up to. “Time doesn’t exist at the shop, I am all-in no matter what,” he said. “I’ve always been like that. I didn’t think I’d have to measure a piston every 100-thousandths to make sure it’s the right shape, but now I do. Every day is a school day, always evolving and getting better.”
This article originally appeared in Sick The Mag’s Spring 2022 print edition. Subscribe now!
After serving in the British Army in 2009, Stefan returned to his VW roots and began tinkering on engines again. His family had grown up around the whistling, buzzing air-cooled machines, and his first engine rebuild at the age of 14 was, naturally, a flat-four. About a year after returning from Afghanistan, Stefan started Air Cooled Engines, now rebranded to ACE Racing Engines (to reflect his growing interest in other platforms). He quickly grew a reputation for shedding the old-school mythos around VW engine tech, experimenting with his own combinations that modernized things like the ring packs and valvetrain. While his own turbo Bugs were quick, eventually his interests shifted into American V8s.
“I was building a ’67 Chevelle for Drag Week in 2015, and I saw Larry Larson's Nova — overnight I wanted one. I have a ’66 Chevelle back at home with twin-turbos, and I didn’t know much about Novas other than the third-gens you see everywhere. So when I saw this, it was bad. Now I’ve had three gen-ones, and I’ve had one gen-two, a wagon.”
The Nova you see before you was purchased in the UK with a naturally aspirated 413ci small block. The 25.1 chassis work had been done, and Stefan was able to quickly find an 8.97 to claim his stake in the eight-second street car game. He had already caught the street car bug by driving the Nova to different race weekends in the UK; it was his skunkworks machine that dialed up his thirst for events like Drag Week. “I used to drive it with jugs of VP methanol in the passenger seat. The goal was to get into the eights, to have an eight-second street car, and we did that before I parked it.”
The Englishman began California dreaming: if he was going to dive down the rabbit hole of big-power V8 street car engines, the UK wasn’t the right place. Stefan and his partner Laura Pugh moved to the United States from the United Kingdom in 2019 to expand their engine building business beyond the air-cooled world, or as they put it: “Why just play with 300hp when you can play with 2000hp?”
Around the World
The timing was rocky; the pandemic was just as dangerous to a new business as to a respiratory system. It might have been a tricky year to expand and grow a company with a fresh reputation, but the pair quickly found their footing and began refocusing on the Nova. In Stefan’s eyes, Drag Week would serve two goals: it was his ultimate bucket list event, where he’d been inspired by the likes of Larson and so many others, and it would serve as a potential six-second business card. Stefan already had a few Drag Weekers’ engines in his shop, but the Nova would put that on display in a way that branded his name with precision work.
“We just started working on it every night and every weekend we could in June as the parts started coming in, the block had arrived — so it was becoming a reality,” he said. “We were meant to take a month off after finishing some customer work too, it ended up like two-and-a-quarter weeks off, but we absolutely thrashed it and got it ready for Drag Week.” They were waitlisted, but little bugs kept materializing, eating time away. “We had to call it, because we would never have the three days to drive up to Michigan.”
When Sick Week was announced, there was suddenly a new goal Stefan could strive for. Despite the appearance of being close to finished, the Nova’s final touches were time-consuming. “It took us weeks of working on it, like 9am to 2am kind of thing. We had to leave a week before Sick Week.”
From his California base, Stefan needed to cross the continent on wheels for the first time — something everybody should experience once.
“I’ve never road tripped across America like that. West Texas was lame, barren as hell and it took a day to drive through it — I didn’t not expect that. I was not ready for how big this country is, it’s mental, the size of it. Then it changes, it gets greener. And then you get into Florida, and suddenly it’s palm trees and everything. It’s cool to drive through so many climates.”
The Nova had yet to turn a lap since its refresh. Stefan was in a familiar purgatory for anyone who’s tried to push a fresh build through at warp-speed, as little teething issues plagued their early tests. They arrived at Pro Line Racing in Ball Ground, Georgia to get some major tweaks done to the drivetrain. A call to Pete Nichols at Circle D resulted in a decision to change the stator in the torque converter, and they needed to re-gear the rear-end for the sake of having enough RPM for quarter-mile passes. While they were south of the punishing winter storm that swept the midwest as many Sick Weekers were trying to make their way south to Florida, the freak cold snap kept Stefan moving
“With the dyno running all day they had to keep the doors up, and it was freezing cold while we had the car up changing out the rear-end and pulling the transmission. We worked all through Wednesday to try and get a pass, but we kept running into little things. No problems, just finishing things. But that was cool, really cool, to see their shop.”
The next stop was at FuelTech to begin dyno tuning the new combination, one that Stefan had spent a significant time building just for drag-and-drive events.
“We run a softer valve spring than the old school mentality, and worked on a lobe with a nice opening and closing ramp,” he elaborated. “Putting that in a drag-and-drive car seemed like a no-brainer. I’ve watched guys break a rocker — fuck that, I didn’t want to deal with that. It didn’t need 1,000 pounds on the nose.”
This was key for our humble engine builder, as he was seeking the hydraulic-roller lifter world record. Traditionally, the mindset is that to contain the valves at higher RPMs, heavy-duty valve springs were required, which then necessitated solid-body lifters in order to support the kinds of high spring rates that would collapse a traditional hydraulic lifter.
“There were a lot of people involved with it, especially Nick at Brian Tooley Racing. It’s like a micro record, but it still feels good. I don’t know, I just like being able to have a small block that can be faster than the big blocks. When I was in England with my 413ci SBC on alcohol, I had a guy that kept trying to race us with a twin-turbo big block ’57 Bel Air. He was an asshole, and kept trying to pick up on races, and I beat him every time. I came from the Volkswagens; they’re under dogs. When you show up with a four-cylinder Bug, and are beating up all the V8 guys, I’ve always liked that. I think it shows the talent of an engine builder. You can show people that you don’t need a $90,000 billet engine to do it.”
The final number? 2,790hp, a hydraulic-roller lifter world record for the LS platform. Despite their struggles over the winter to get the Nova dialed in, it seemed at the eve of Sick Week in Bradenton that everything was going to work out. Closing out that first night at the Freedom Factory, the team braced themselves for the unknown. While the Nova had been making dyno passes aplenty, it had yet to make a full-tilt run ahead of the event.
“On the first test pass during the test and tune, I came off the throttle with the trans brake,” Stefan confessed. He’d basically built up bad muscle memory from spool testing prior to the converter swap and re-gearing. With registration taking most of the day, there wasn’t a second chance to keep testing before racing began.
Weak Link
Announcer Derek Putnam crowed over the public address system of Bradenton Motorsports Park, as Stefan slowly moved through the staging lanes, awaiting his first turn at the track. He would have a solo run in the radial lane, which had enough VP traction compound to keep any tire hooked. First the burnout, and then a long wait for the smoke to clear from the cabin, as a crew member furiously waved the door. Visibility restore, Stefan could move into stage.
“That first pass on Monday was the first time I kept my foot down, and I was like, ‘Keep that there!’” The 3G launch was the most acceleration he’d ever felt; the nearly 3,000 hp Nova was finally alive, and broke through the eighth at nearly 150 mph. “I pedaled a bit before the eighth, shifted at 7900rpm I think, I wasn’t even looking at the shift lights, I was just looking at the track. I guess I just wanted to make sure I went straight down the track. But right after that, the fluid was on the windshield, and I was like, ‘Fuck me.’”
The silicone coupler that connected the electric water pump to the lower radiator port failed mid-pass, dumping coolant under the rear tires and immediately rotating the Nova clockwise. First the back corner met the wall, and then the front. The car was obscured by its own tire smoke, and many on the start line feared the worst.
In a flash, years of sacrifice, months of commitment, and thousands of miles of driving just to merely enter the door had been lost. Stefan got out of the car, bewildered, but livid once he found the minute failure that had potentially cost him the machine that had been a part of his obsession and motivation for drag-and-drive races. The hood was gone, peeling up the cowl vents on the way out. The entire front clip had shifted over to the left, too.
As the dust settled, Stefan leaned against the garages beside the track, staring at the battered Nova. The adrenaline was fading, and analysis beginning. He started to realize it could be salvaged.
“At first though, I thought about taking a couple of days off and just going to the beach. But then I felt that we had come too far, and that’s what Laura and Jerome were saying. It just looked cosmetic, and we started taking everything off.”
The tires looked like someone had taken a belt sander to the tread, resulting in such a harsh, bumping thud while they rolled that Stefan wasn’t sure if it was the rubber or the axle. Once he snapped out of the daze, Stefan realized things were fine between the wheels. A gang of racers had descended on their pits to help sort the sheet metal issues, brainstorming the best mounting solution. Roadkill’s Mike Finnegan was quick to source a new set of tires. The first day hadn’t gone as planned, by any means, but that evening, the team drove the bruised street sweeper to McDonald’s for some victory nutrition. It was rolling; they weren’t dead yet.
Spiritfarers
When Stefan et al. arrived the next morning at Orlando Speedway, they were already heroes. Field fixes for the fenders were in the form of cross-braced ratchet straps. The scuffs and scars from the meeting with the wall were still present, but glory lasts forever. Scattered storms that day had canceled racing, so they took their time, pacing themselves for the drive through downpours. Sadly, this too would push the Nova into potential failure. Their ignition box, mounted under the hood, was getting soaked. To Stefan’s credit, he owned up to the mistake of putting the box, a unit that was never designed to be weatherproof, directly into the storm. The electronics were toast when we caught them rolling backwards down the A1A bridge near Daytona Beach.
“We were stuck on the road, in the rain, looking for parts. It’s a scenario I knew could happen, I just didn’t expect it to. I expected there to be some redneck looking at us on the side of the road with a bunch of Snap-On tools, ready to grab them.” Rossi just wasn’t sure what to expect in a new country (and Florida man is real). Quickly, though, his concerns subsided as the kitschy coffee shop they broke down in front of cheerfully mentioned they’d allow the Nova to stay in the lot while the ACE Racing Engines crew figured out a plan, watching over it while on-duty.
“I was just worried about getting parts, it was never a question of if we kept going. It was never a question of if we could do this, just how long it would take to do it,” said Laura. They still had a time-limit, the next day of racing, so it was critical that they source a new ignition box.
Stefan was less confident, as the Nova remained motionless in weather more suited to his native England than Florida.
“When the box failed, I was just like, ‘Damn.’ I even said to Jerome, ‘I think we’re fucking out.’ I didn’t know if we could get parts. The engine would not start, there was no spark. I had spare everythings: coils, plug wires, but no box. Anderson Dick, the owner of FuelTech, ended up tracking one down one on a customer’s car in Orlando.”
Stefan and Jerome had to grab an Uber and make a three hour round trip, but this quick save by FuelTech’s head honcho salvaged their efforts and got the Nova back on the road.
The next day at Gainesville, Rossi finished repairs — building brackets to support the fenders, and welding one of the ‘chute mounts back together. Nervously, they lined up for a half-track shakedown, for what would be easily the crew’s most memorable 10-second run ever. It was, in its own variety, the only victory they really needed.
“By Thursday and Friday, I really started chilling out, thinking, ‘Wicked, this is cool,’ The sun was setting on the highway. It was badass. On the first couple of days we were always thinking, ‘What was that noise!?’ It was nice to relax. We actually had more sleep during Sick Week than the weeks prior. So it was a relief!”
There’s the perseverance, the commitment, and the sacrifices over the past three years since moving to the United States. Watching someone go through the realization that it was not all over, that the mission could push on: these were the factors pooled together as discussion took place on who would win the Sickest of the Sick Award at Sick Week. The unique trophy was constructed by Spirit of Drag Week winner Mike Murray. Though there was stiff competition from Shane Leivestad, the ACE Racing Engine team’s decision to carry on when it would have been all-too-easy to throw the car into the trailer on day one was the difference.
“It was bitter sweet, because I wanted to go fast all week and be noticed for the engine and the car that I had built, not noticed because I crashed and didn’t give up. But at the same time it was very humbling to win the award and apart from crashing, we had an amazing week with amazing like-minded people.
“We will get the car tested and dialed in ready for next year's event. You think about all the money and time, the late nights, talking about ‘I wanna do this, and I wanna do that’ and be a part of it all. We actually did it. I guess we made a figment of imagination a reality.”
