HUNTSVILLE - Nobody will ever accuse Martin Barkey of not being a hands-on entrepreneur.
Especially if you consider those hands are on the wheel of a modified racing car, travelling at break-neck speed.
Barkey, who is the president and chief operating officer for both MBRP Inc. and its sister company, The Garage, has taken matters into his own hands when it comes to the companies’ most recent project, testing its products on a race car that Barkey actually drives himself on a competitive circuit.
The recently-created The Garage/MBRP Race Team has a 2010 Dodge Viper ACR-X, is one of 50 factory-built race cars and according to Barkey, perhaps one of only three in the entire country.
The team is competing at the Canadian Automobile Sport Clubs championships, an amateur eight race series at Mosport in Bowmanville, Shannonville, and Calabogie.
“This car has a very good pedigree and has always performed well at just about every event it has gone to … the big thing for me is that it hadn’t been smashed up before,” he said. “It is in pretty good shape for a race car. We bought it and brought it into Canada. That marked the start of The Garage/MBRP Race Team.”  
While there is enjoyment in the racing for Barkey and his team of about six or seven other people, there is also a business aspect to the project.
He said that once the crew got its hands on the 2010 Viper, they made some modifications to the car, which of course included the installation of some MBRP-designed products.
“We thought we would put some time and effort into the car. We put some development money into it and we are testing an MBRP exhaust in this car right now, so there is some product development going on with this team as well.”   
The team had its first race at the Mosport International raceway in Bowmanville the May 4-5 weekend.
Barkey finished second in the GT2 class of the race, a fact that he said makes him happy because he managed to step on the podium at the end in one piece.  
“It is a one-hour race with one pit stop. You win by getting the most laps during the one-hour time limit. Not only did we get a podium finish but we raced our fastest lap time ever,” he said, adding that the car reached more than 160 miles per hour at one point of the race. The guys have the car setup very well. Our real goal was to go out there and bring the car home in one piece.”
There were only three cars in his racing category in the Bowmanville event, and one of the cars was eliminated after the driver crashed.
Barkey said that while making the podium was a given, he and his crew had a more focused goal in mind that particular day.
“Our real goal was to go out there and bring the car home in one piece. Just the week before the race we put the car into the wall three days before the race.”
Barkey was not what you would entirely call a rookie racer prior to his first trip around the track with the Viper that early May weekend.
He has entered what is called “high-performance driving” events prior to sliding behind the wheel of his new race car.
“I had two previous Vipers, but what I did was go to a track, showing up with 30 other Vipers, Corvettes, Mustangs … and we would drive around the track as fast as we could … but that was high-performance driving, not racing. I have never raced ever. Never done a pace lap before …so that (May 5) weekend was my first ever race personally. But I never lost my position and I passed a lot of people that day.”
There were 31 cars racing at the Bowmanville event, in five distinct classes at the same time as The Garage/MBRP racing team, and the car came in 10th overall in the race.  
Barkey said that once he got used to the fact that he was in an actual race, his competitive juices started flowing.
“Part of me wanted to go catch the guy in front of me. He is a pretty established racer with a car that is actually faster than mine … For me personally, I am competitive as can be and now me and the guys on the team have one goal … let’s go catch that guy.”
The Garage/MBRP Race team will have a chance to do just that very soon.
The next race for team is in Shannonville, near Napanee, on May 25-27 for the second leg of the eight-stop circuit.