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Muellerized... chassis specialist John
Mueller is a perfectionist when it comes to constructing and developing
high-performance suspension components. He draws on his 26 years of
road race driving experience to identify and implement many unique
solutions to bring Mitsubishi chassis to a previously unheard of
performance level. Recently, this was illustrated in the pages of Sport
Compact car Magazine, where Mueller took a customer's drag race AWD
Mitsubishi Eclipse, bolted on 4 corners of his own proprietary
suspension, and won the Road Course event at California Speedway in
this year's Ultimate Street Car Challenge. This event is covered in the
February and March 2004 issues of Sport Compact Car. This car also
pulled 1.071G on the skidpad, the highest number ever recorded by this
magazine for an AWD street car.
Mueller has competed in many different types of road racing vehicles,
dating back to his first win at an SCCA driver's school in July of 1985
at the age of18. He successfully competed in SCCA club racing
throughout the late 80s, winning a CalClub Championship after many pole
positions and winning races overall, competing in an outclassed, self
funded, and self prepared car. His efforts resulted in being awarded
the Pete Sharland Memorial award, given to the CalClub 'Low Bucks'
Racer of the Year. Mueller had already proven himself a force in SCCA
Pro Racing by dominating his debut 3-hour race at Sears Point in a self
constructed Mazda GTUs, competing with a RWD naturally aspirated car
against turbo AWD cars. His IMSA races were initially in VW factory
backed cars, based on the east coast, using engines and chassis that he
built and developed. Later he switched teams to a Honda backed team
based in the Midwest. Driving in endurance races across the United
States has given him tremendous insight regarding setting up racing
chassis for a variety of courses and weather conditions in races as
long as 24 hours in length. When on the west coast, Mueller performed
competition driving instruction for a school based at Willow Springs
Raceway. Throughout the 1990s, Mueller competed with distinction,
driving many different chassis in SCCA and NASA club and endurance
racing. He also logged thousands of on track miles developing and
evaluating components for many large aftermarket corporations. He has
traveled internationally designing and constructing racing chassis
components on-site, then tuning these components to a razor's edge from
behind the steering wheel.
The foundation for his chassis development skills, started with helping
the racing teams his father, road racing legend Lee Mueller, drove for.
This started from the time that he was old enough to ask his dad Lee if
he could go with him to the track. This is significant as Lee finished
his racing career as a 4 time SCCA National Champion, IMSA GTU
Champion, 3 time winner of the 24 hours of Daytona, and 12 hours of
Sebring winner. In the shop, Mueller has been mentored by some of the
best in the automotive industry, starting his professional career
working for racing wizard Dave Kent, building championship IMSA GTU
cars. He worked tirelessly at the track under the tutelage of IMSA
Mechanic of the Year Harry Haggard. Then he worked for Carroll Shelby,
at Chrysler Corporation's California Development Center, guided by
engineer Neil Hannemann. Many winning drivers have turned to Mueller
for 1 on 1 instruction and chassis development, often attributing their
rise to competitiveness to a Mueller racing line or suspension set-up
advantage. Mueller not only knows how to make a car go fast for a lap,
but how to achieve one hundred percent of you and your car's
performance potential.
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