Greetings

Is that the Ford that aspires to be a car?   

Welcome LitttleJohn.  Poor choice indeed - You're going to fit in well.

Theming/decorations do not count, also safety is exempt. Roll cage, seat, harness, tires, brakes and driver information all fall under safety exemption. Basically your car, the engine, the cooling and fuel delivery systems, and suspension are the main things that must fit in the $500 budget.

Not usually.  Windows, both driver and passenger, have to be rolled down so the odds of it doing any good are poor.  Added complexity, heat dumped in front the radiator, etc make it normally unwise.

Cool suits are common in places that really get hot...or with severely wussy VW teams when the temp cracks over 72 F.

I REpreSENT that comment!! says the sweaty guy driving an 84' VW Rabbit!! Actually Lyingking, coolsuits are the way to go, even if you did have a properly working, horsepower robbing functioning AC it would do very little getting through your fire suit, which is much like wearing your grandmother's quilt to go racing in! The cool shirts work very well and you wear them under your fire suit so it is MUCH more effective! The shirts are a little pricey, around $100 each but it's a wise investment if you will be racing in anything 85 degrees plus as you certainly have enough to worry about on track without being oppressively hot and thinking about how much you'd like to get out of the car. Another thing we did for pit stops at Autobahn in July this year was to mount a box fan hanging from the pop up tent blowing in through the driver's window during pit stops as with no air movement the drivers tended to get pretty hot pretty quick. Should note that our team is notoriously slow on pit stops as most of as are easily distracted by balloons, shiny things, squirrels, etc.

You ran enough laps to require a pit stop?

We consider it a pit stop if we leave the track and come into the paddock for any reason. Any reason whatsoever, grenaded transmission, nuked head gasket(twice now), failing water pump, lost blow by filter causing oil to spray on the exhaust manifold resulting in copious smoke, loose exhaust system, failing alternator, broken throttle cable, etc. etc. Oh, and someday we're hoping to actually need fuel during one of these "stops."