VETTE magazine received this email from Dan Fastuca, the lead guitarist who performed the National Anthem for the ALMS debut of the Corvette GT2 race car at the Mid Ohio race on August 8th.
Some VETTE readers asked why Mid Ohio publicly apologized for Dan Fastuca being chosen as the talent for the performance. Here is his reply:
“Some people at the track did not like my looks. I stood wearing the firesuit of an American hero, Ron Fellows. The guitar I used featured an American flag and the American Le Mans (ALMS) logo. Still, some called me unpatriotic.
The producer of the pre-race show asked me to fill over four minutes of time instead of the prearranged anthem (about 2 minutes long). As I walked on to perform, the producer held up "time-remaining" cards in front of me to indicate exactly how much time was needed to fill. This said, I just riffed around a bit on the guitar, shut it down for a second (to indicate that this would be the beginning of the National Anthem), and then began playing the anthem itself.
By reading a different forum just last night, it became clear that people thought that the entire 4-5 minutes was my rendition of the National Anthem. The venue’s PA was also distorting and cutting in and out. I figured that as it was already doing so during the spoken interviews with people, people would figure out that the poor sound was the PA, not my rig. Unfortunately, some did not.
The real shame is I only participated in this to make people happy. I apologize that some did not enjoy my being there, but keep in mind that the person working at the track was yelling, ‘Unplug him. We did not sign on for this. This is not our image!’ This was all before I played.”