By Pete Borello

Like most sports, auto racing has etiquette.

A driver who wins a racing series - particularly a national championship event - behind the wheel of a friend and fellow competitor’s car should not tease his pal about it. Especially if that friend towed the car 1,800 miles to race in the series, only to finish 17th.

“That’s not something you joke about,” said Jeff Reitmeir, who won the Street Modified category of the recent SCCA Nationals driving Gary Richardson’s BMW M3. “It hit him pretty hard. He expected to do better and wasn’t that happy.”

Although he has captured seven national titles in 20 years of racing, Reitmeir described his latest victory as “kind of a minor miracle.”

The Los Altos resident and co-owner of Reitmeir’s Werkstatt auto shop on First Street initially planned just to help Richardson prepare the 1995 BMW for the series. But about a month prior to the nationals, held Sept. 9-13 in Topeka, Kan., Reitmeir caught the racing bug.

“It was the right process at the right time,” said the 38-year-old, who claimed his first national crown since 1997.

The format used by the Sports Car Club of America at the national allowed Reitmeir and Richardson, a Sunnyvale resident, both to race the same car during the two days of competition.

Instead of going head-to-head on the same track, the 40 participants raced individually on two courses at Forbes Field and were judged by how fast they completed each one. The drivers had three runs on both tracks, with only the best time on each course going into their combined time.

The cars topped out between 70-80 mph, according to Reitmeir, who said the racing series was more about “handling and maneuverability” than speed. That’s because the courses were more challenging than just taking left turns.

“There were a lot of twisties, some straightaways and slaloms, where you had to weave in and out of cones,” said Reitmeir, who posted a winning combined time of 95.980 seconds.

Reitmeir said the car, with it’s super-charged engine, ran “flawlessly” all weekend.

The lone drawback: he misses driving it.

“I’m going through withdrawals right now,” he said.