About

Rules Lawyer Racing

Rules Lawyer Racing is the build log of Cicada, my 1999 C5 Corvette — and of the process of turning it into a dedicated track car, one project at a time.

The car

Cicada started as a roughly 90,000-mile 1999 Corvette coupe bought off Facebook Marketplace just before Christmas 2023. The goal was a manual-gearbox track car that would be cheaper to run — and easier to risk — than my street car, built for autocross, HPDE, and time trials.

The name comes from the gap between Corvettes. I had another C5 back when they were new; 17 years later, this one emerged.

Since then it has been stripped, caged, and rebuilt end to end: a fresh 11.1:1 LS1 with CNC-ported heads and a Summit Stage 2 cam, a Tilton clutch, an MK60 ABS conversion, delrin suspension bushings with a camber lockout kit, a chassis-mounted wing, and a long list of cooling, brake, and safety work. The whole story is in the build log, in the order it actually happened — failures included.

The blog name

“Rules lawyer” is a gaming term. My buddy Paul started calling me that because I had an encyclopedic knowledge of the rules in the games we played together. It stuck, and it became my most commonly used online alias.

The driver

I raced in the early 2000’s with Chicago SCCA, and TSSCC. Circumstances made me take a long break, but I came back again in 2022. I won class A with the Windy City BMW Club, and trophied with 2nd place in E for two years. I’ve been in advanced class in HPDE for several years and transitioning into doing more time attack.

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