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Press Release  6/21/01

Toad HALL MOTOR RACING at Elkhart Lake, 2001 When Toad Hall Motor Racing drivers Peter Kitchak, and Jim Oppenheimer, long time competitors at the Elkhart Historics, take to the grid in the Brian Redman International Challenge, on July 18, they take a large piece of racing history and no small amount of fun with them. Oppenheimer’s 1969 Lola T-70 and Kitchak’s 1969 Lola T-70 are as old as some of the drivers in the field. Kitchak’s PORSCHE 911 is the same age, it was 32 in April. Oppenheimer and Kitchak each have a car entered in the Can Am Feature and both cars are almost identical.  Kitchak got his Lola T-70 as a birthday present from his wife this past month.   Oppenheimer's T-70   Kitchak's T-70 TOAD HALL MOTOR RACING, which has 7 cars entered in the weekend's races, gets its name from The Wind in the Willows children's story. In 1908, Kenneth Grahame, an English author, wrote The Wind in the Willows in which Mr. Toad was a central character. Later translated into a Disney Movie, Wind in the Willows included a number of woodland characters reminiscent of people from every-day life.  Among those characters were Mr. Rat, Mr. Badger, and of course, Mr. Toad...the inspiration for Toad Hall Motor Racing  An eccentric gentleman with a weakness for fancy, fast motorcars, Mr. Toad was always in trouble with the police and always terrorizing the neighborhood with his latest automotive purchase.  He would often go for fast, noisy rides through the countryside with his car billowing plumes of dust behind. Mr. Toad lived at Toad Hall, a mansion in the forest, where he stored his motorcars.  He described Toad Hall as "a gentleman's residence, very unique, dating from the fourteenth century, but replete with every modern convenience." A phrase from Wind in the Willows portrays the essence of Mr. Toad:   "They reached the carriage-drive of Toad Hall to find a shiny new motor-car of great size, painted a bright red (Toad's favorite color), standing in front of the house.  As they          neared the door it was flung open and Mr. Toad, arrayed in goggles, cap, gaiters, and an enormous overcoat, came swaggering down the steps drawing on his gauntleted gloves." Michael Keyser, then a movie producer and producer of a famous racing movie, The Speed Merchants, originally used the Toad Hall Motor Racing name in the early 1970s for his successful Porsche racing team.  This weekend’s entrants Jim Oppenheimer and Peter Kitchak are partners in Toad Hall Motor Racing.   And they, recognizing a bit of Mr. Toad in all of us while acting out their childhood fantasies to race motorcars, have renewed Toad Hall Motor Racing with the assistance and support of its originator, Michael Keyser. Said Oppenheimer,  “Toad Hall represents the childlike qualities in all of us, and, as Mr. Toad would have put it,  “The joy of simply messing around with Motor Cars.” Oppenheimer has entered no less than 5 cars in the Brian Redman International Challenge, his Lola T-70 Mk 3B, two Porsche 962s, a Lola T-192 Formula 5000 car, and a 1978 BMW powered Lola T296. Kitchak and Oppenheimer have both competed at the 24 Hours of Daytona and the 12 hours of Sebring.  Kitchak also drove in the 24 hours of Le Mans in 1997, 1998 and 1999.  In 1998 Kitchak won his class in the 24 hours of Daytona, poster, driving a GT-2 Porsche. In 1999 he was the runner up in the driver’s championship for the Speedvision GT Championship. Poster. Kitchak, 60, who is married and a resident of Excelsior, MN, started his racing career driving Porsches on frozen lakes in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Canada in the early 1970s. He won both the International Ice Racing Championship and the Canadian American Ice Racing Championship during that period. In "his other life," Kitchak is a business-man who is the founder and president of The Keewaydin Group, a national real estate consulting firm headquartered in Minneapolis.  Jim Oppenheimer, who races “about 15 weekends a year,“ is a retired packaging executive. He is not working on his golf game,  but says he “…is working on his tan” when not racing. Oppenheimer is 58 years old, is married and has two children. Visit Toad Hall Motor Racing at www.toadhallracing.com