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 Magaz
ine, 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.
