Abel Ibarra Joins Prime Motivation on High School Campaign

This famed K&N sponsored vehicle along with the driver Abel Ibarra will be at Elsmere High School.

Ibarra wanted to make that little Mazda into the fastest street car anyone had ever seen.

“My whole goal was to build this little car into the ultimate street racer car,” Ibarra said. “I was going to go out there and kill all the V-8s.”

He achieved his goal. The car is part of the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum in Pomona, California. But his path to legendary status was not exactly the one Ibarra planned. Ibarra turned his Mazda into one of the fastest dragsters in the history of the NHRA. He wants to share his experiences with the next generation of car builders and drivers when he joins Prime Motivation and its tour of high schools.

Ibarra made a drastic change to his Mazda R100. Instead of using a supercharged engine, he decided to go with a turbocharger. It was a bold and unconventional move, but one that made all the difference in the car.

“He’s a pioneer. He doesn’t follow people,” said Bill Montgomery, Marketing and Business Development with Prime Motivation. “He’s a leader. He’s very easy to approach.”

The first time Ibarra raced his Mazda R100, it wasn’t all that impressive. He took it to an event in Bakersfield, California and it didn’t perform anywhere near where he had expected. It was fast, Ibarra said he ran an 11.20 second on his first run and another at 10.80 seconds.

“It was breaking up really bad,” Ibarra said. “When I went out and made another attempt and ran a 10.8. That got a lot of people’s attention. I wasn’t even launching the car. It was breaking up.”

On the drive home, he stopped at an In-N-Out in Bakersfield. He made some adjustments on the car and decided to rent out a track in Palmdale to make some more runs. In Palmdale, the car broke the 10-second barrier. Ibarra said he made runs in the 8-second range. The rest is history.

Ibarra took the car all over the country, breaking records and winning events. Now the car is part of the NHRA museum. He has two other Mazdas that he races now. But he will bring his Mazda R100 to the students at Elsmere High School to talk about how to make a career out of drag racing.

“It’s a great opportunity to go to the schools,” Ibarra said, “show the kids if you study, stay in school, or if you follow a career in cars, what you can achieve.”

Montgomery said the focus of his Prime Motivation campaign is to find ways to motivate high school students and teachers into learning more about the automotive industry.

“These kids nowadays, they feel like they are entitled, because of their cell phones, they feel like there is a ‘beam-me-up-Scotty’ and all of a sudden some money is going to fall out of the sky,” Montgomery said. "Abel used the car and what he’s done, he can now talk to these kids about work. You got to continue to do the work, like I did.”

Ibarra said he wants to let students know there are plenty of opportunities in auto racing and motorsports.

“My main thing is to talk and communicate with the kids and let them know they have different options and how important education is,” Ibarra said. “Especially nowadays, without a career and education, you’re not going to get anywhere. Any kind of communication that I can have with them, even if you only reach a couple, you’ve done a great thing. Just to try to communicate with as many of them as I can.”

Montgomery added that the opportunities in the automotive industry are endless. Exposing students to those opportunities is beneficial to companies in the automotive industry.

“Nobody knows about the automotive industry anymore,” Montgomery said. “We are trying to bring education not only to the students, but to the teachers. When we go, these teachers get excited about stuff. Sometimes, the teachers end up talking to Abel more than the students. They are so intrigued."

“Everybody’s pushing the four-year college. The cities and the states, their mandate goal is 100 percent on college. I’m all for that, but that’s not reality. That’s a big problem. That’s why we need to be on campus. We’re not going to get 100-percent. We’re just not going to get there.”

Ibarra said the level of interest from the students is always high. They can also relate to Ibarra, because at one time, he was a student looking for a way to succeed in motorsports.

“They are always interested,” Ibarra said. “What they find amazing is wow, you really did grow up in the hood. You grew up in the hood and you know how to do all of this. They definitely want to know, how did you start, what did you do? They do get a big interest. I was really good in school, I got good grades, and I wanted to become an engineer and take it to the next step. I even went to USC on a Mechanical Engineering scholarship. You can do lots of things, you just got to put the effort into it.”