From Milk to Pigeons to Abel…

This is the Statt Mann Baby. Time to Scatt a little bit.

In the midst of all the dark headlines and dark times I chose to get lost a bit on Sunday. So, I turned right onto the Freak Nation’s Highway 1, our third show and a man who’s been a friend since that night: Abel Ibarra.

Abel will forever be THE OG of Sport Compact drag racing. He made Mazda rotaries sing in harmonies few have before or since.

One of his early cars, a tiny R100 coupe, was in the NHRA Wally Parks Museum in Pomona for months. It’ll still make an appearance in a Mazda dealership here and there. His RX8, though, was magnificent and blisteringly fast.

The best memory of Abel though was going to dinner with him after an appearance on the show. He ordered pancakes and a glass of milk. He looked at our stunned faces and shrugged: “What?! I like milk.”

It was Abel. Forever his own man. Between the milk and his racing pigeons, there is no other. He’s the prototype AND the standard.

I talked with Abel about a year ago and it was like we’d never lost contact for two decades.

I needed that trip. You can’t ask for more from a memory.

Peace.