About HANSON Motorsports

HANSON Motorsports was started by Rick Hanson in 1993. As a long time automobile enthusiast, Rick has been working on his own cars out of necessity. His first race car, a 1972 ITS Datsun 240Z, needed a lot of work to go from barely more than a daily driver to a true race car. With the exception of welding, Rick was able to do everything else to get the Z race ready.

Over the next couple of years Rick upgraded the suspension, swapped engines, added a race seat and generally made the car safer. During this time the expense of outsourcing welding work proved to cut into Rick's miniscule race budget. It just happened that Rick was able to get a used Lincoln MIG welder as barter for a programming job around this time. With the addition of a good quality tubing bender and notcher Rick was on his way to fabricating cages.

Rick's attention to detail and engineering background allows him to design and build light, yet safe roll cages. He also has retrofit many cages with NASCAR style door bars and new required bracing, as well as performed other miscellaneous welding jobs.

An incident in turn one of Gateway International raceway in 1998 ended the life of the first ITS car. Rick found another 1972 240Z in a Z junk yard for $400. It took nearly forty hours of welding to get the frame rails and floors fixed and to be safe. Another 60 hours and Rick's second ITS car was ready to debut.

The second car, dubbed the Lizard because of the green spotted decal job, started racing in the year 2000. It had a short life of about eight race days. A failed valve stem on the left front rim caused the car to dart off the track coming out of the Esses (turn three) at Gateway. The car struck the tire wall and cartwheeled through the air until it came to rest about 40 feet down track. Scratch another ITS car.

In 2002 we purchased three 240Z cars. A 1970 for $50, a 1971 for $750 and a 1972 for $400. The 1970 was immediately sold for $500. The 1971 was going to be finished out as a daily driver and the 1972 was going to be used for the new race car. As it turned out, the 1972 needed too much work to make a safe race car so it was parted out including the roof and right rear quarter.

The 1971 was in very good shape so the streetable parts were sold off and the car was gutted to start the build of the race car. It was decided that we would not build another ITS car, but rather move up to an E-Production car. We are detailing the build here.