Westwood Racing Supplies

After a two-month hiatus, I’m excited to bring you another in my series of profiles of our club’s sponsors. For starters, thank you to all our sponsors for the important role you play in the POC’s financial health, year after year. For all the readers, please use our sponsors products and services whenever possible.

In this month’s sponsor profile, I talked with Eric Olberz about his Westwood Racing Supplies company, as well as Eric’s long history with the POC and deep interest in Porsche since he first experienced driving one in the 1980’s.

Let’s start with Eric’s motorsports retail operation, Westwood Racing Supplies. He started the company a little over two years ago. He described it like this, “I had been thinking about a motorsports business for a long time, about 20 years, and with more free time I decided to do it. I started it first with internet only, no store location, and began building things from nothing.”

I asked Eric about the business now, after the startup phase, and he said, “After about a year of internet only sales, I opened the store, in Bel Air/ Westwood, about 1200 square feet. I’ve been really happy with the walk in traffic and customers from all kinds of motorsports, of all ages, autocross, on track, rally, desert. I’ve also noticed recently more SIM related customers, that are starting to do track days, and need all the appropriate gear.”

I have yet to visit the Westwood showroom in person, but I plan on it as soon as possible. After seeing a picture of the store, it’s clear Eric keeps a sizeable inventory on hand. He said, “I like to keep about $200,000 of inventory, since I like having it on hand, and not have to order too much when customers are in the store.

When I started the business I had nice support from Alpinestars (also a POC sponsor), and I like to feature their products as much as I can.”

After starting with 100% internet sales only Eric said, “Now I’m at about 60% in store, 40% internet sales. And I’m starting to sell items like Garmin, driver cooling systems, transponders, and electronics.”

As far as his working hours, he said, “I’m the owner and employee, I do the website, the store, really everything.” Let’s just say Eric is busy! I asked him what he would like to work toward with the business the next three to five years, and he said, “I’d like to keep growing, expand the business. There aren’t really any store fronts, motorsports related in this area, so I think I can grow more, as more people know I’m here.”

Now, let’s go from the business world to the track and personal life for Eric. It’s really interesting to hear how the racetrack and motorsports came into a person’s life, and often becomes an important part of it. I think almost everyone reading this can relate! I asked Eric what began this 40+ year “hobby.” His reply was, “I started getting the driving-on-track bug

when I was a teenager, beginning with my VW. My friends and I would drive Angela’s Crest fast as we could in those old cars, but that turned to Porsche interest, in the mid 80’s. I was 22 and my Dad helped me buy a blue 1986 Carrera. I was looking at a used one, but one thing led to another and I ended up doing a Euro delivery in Stuttgart.” I stopped Eric there and I said, you surely were pretty early in the Stuttgart delivery program (I’m saying this not being aware of when that program started!), but I have done that as well and it’s one of the highlights of all things Porsche I’ve done. It should be on all your bucket lists to take delivery at the factory, have a week vacation driving it, return to the factory and fly home to wait six to eight weeks for the car to arrive. For Porsche street cars, I don’t think it gets better than that.

Back to Eric. He said, “In 1986 or 1987 a doctor friend of mine, Dr. Ralph Martin, a POC member beginning I think in 1955, got me going on track and POC too. I started at Riverside Raceway in that 1986 Carrera, all stock until I morphed it into a GT1 car making 350 hp, and into a race car in the early 90’s.” Eric went on, “At that time, Riverside, and POC too, had a huge Speedsters group. TT in Speedsters. We didn’t have wheel to wheel racing ‘til into the 90’s, so I did TT and Autocross a lot. Also, I started in karting, where I did my first race. I also did the Russell Formula programs. In 1992 I modified the 1986 blue Carrera and started wheel- to-wheel racing in POC, until about 2000 in that car. I think that first POC race was at Riverside in 1992. And amazingly, just a few short years ago, I was offered to buy back that car that I began with, but I passed on it.”

Eric went on to run bigger and national level series in the 2000’s, with World Challenge in Porsche Cup Cars around 2006-2008.

The highest level. He said, “Those were some of my best memories on track, and really a big memory is the World Challenge at the Long Beach Grand Prix weekend, running Cup Cars. I won’t forget passing Andy Pilgrim (World Challenge major driver), feeling really good about it, then crashing into Turn 1 at Long Beach. My family was there, and a huge weekend crowd. I remember a lot of eyes on me at that point, but not for the best reason!”

Eric also said, “I think my most exciting race in that series was Mid-Ohio, since that track is so good. With 30 Cup Cars, I passed quite a few and just missed the top 10, finishing 11th.”

It’s really inspiring to hear about Eric’s track experiences and longevity. I asked him, what keeps him fresh and coming back to the track after 40 years? I really liked his answer, “I love the challenge, and learning new things, with different race cars. I like that feeling of buckling into the harness for the first time on a weekend, rolling out on Friday, and thinking, I can’t believe I’m doing this. Also, the Monday ‘buzz.’ I love feeling all that happened over the weekend and still feeling it on Monday.” May we all know and keep feeling all that!

Eric grew up in Pasadena (thus the Angela’s Crest access), and lives in Bel Air with his wife Maryam, who is a big part of Eric’s track life too. It’s always great to see her out at the track! Maryam has a store connected to Westwood Racing Supplies, offering women’s active wear and gym, yoga wear. He said, they’ll have customers come in with the man getting his track gear, and his wife or girlfriend getting items with Maryam. Nice combination that is! Maryam and Eric have two grown sons each. Maryam’s are Andrew (30) and Ash (24), both in the LA area, while Eric’s sons are Markus (30) and Karl (27), with Markus living in Germany and Karl in Idaho. I asked Eric if any of the boys caught track fever and he said, “Markus did, he joined POC, got cup race licensed with a 2012 Cayman R. He loved it, but he’s built a life in Germany, so no more POC recently.”

Eric’s interests and hobbies outside of being on track are, drumroll please… as he said, “F1 and other forms of motorsports. I just love it. We’ve tried to go to F1 races every few years, my favorite being Monaco in 2018.”

I can’t thank Eric enough for spending some time together and letting us all know more about one of longest serving, and currently racing, POC members. Good luck building Westwood Racing Supplies and thank you for your sponsorship and commitment to the POC.

Good luck to everyone going to Sonoma and have a great summer!

Steve Town Sponsorship Director