Fall Sprints

With the championship locked and the engine oil pressure too low for comfort, I was prepared to skip the rest of the season and begin the winter overhaul on the race car. But I needed to run one more SCCA-sanctioned race to renew my SCCA license, and the car was ready, so I was persuaded to run the next Blackhawk race, this one run by the Chicago Region of SCCA.

This was a Regional race taking place over the course of two days (Saturday and Sunday). My group would qualify early on Saturday and race before lunch on Sunday. This was quite a contrast to most of the events I've run so far. All but a few have been either one-day races with three sessions crammed into one day, or double race weekends with two or three sessions each on Saturday and Sunday. I'm not used to having a lot of time on my hands during a race weekend.

The track was cold and slippery for the first qualifying session early Saturday morning, so I didn't accomplish much except to avoid a Formula Vee that had spun across track in corner 3. I had to take to the grass on the outside of the corner, and I learned that the track did in fact have a bit more traction than the damp grass.* No harm done, I got back on the track and finished the session.

The second qualifying session started off pretty poorly. I couldn't get settled down, I couldn't get a rhythm, and I was all over the track. After posting about a half a dozen laps in the high 1:25 range, I decided to quit pushing so hard and to try to follow a Formula Vee. Many people will tell you how much a season in an FV can teach you about driving fast. I don't think they realize how much a single session behind an FV can teach you about driving fast! Those cars have half the horsepower of a Formula Ford, half the tire, drum brakes, and suspension that just shouldn't work at all, but they can out-corner any Formula Ford. The drivers learn to conserve momentum rather than relying on horsepower for fast lap times, so their cornering speed is not much lower than their straightline speed. Following that car got me settled down and really focused my concentration on the task at hand. I passed him after a few good laps and immediately turned a 1:20.38.

That was good enough for the CFF pole position... but there were no CFFs behind me. I had been told that this event would be crowded, that "everybody" comes out to have the one last bash before the winter. But I was the only CFF entrant. All I had to do was finish the race to get a win.

Sunday morning was a little warmer than Saturday morning, but still colder than Saturday afternoon. We left everything as it was for Saturday and headed to the grid. I was directly behind Todd Rhoades in a Swift DB-1 Formula Ford, between some F500s, and in front of all of the FVs. The start went well, and I even managed to keep Todd in sight for the first several laps despite the Swift's more advanced suspension, more aerodynamic body, and stickier tires. Once his tires warmed up, he pulled away and I didn't push the issue. I finished the race, which was enough for a win. I took a victory lap with another huge checkered flag slapping against my helmet.

The real drama of this race was at the front of the pack in the Formula Ford race. Bruce Lindstrand ran his '92 Van Diemen (his first time in that car this year) against Mark Kolell's very fast '85 Van Diemen. Bruce started in front of Mark and held him off for 24 laps. Well, almost 24 laps. Mark passed him coming out of the last turn and crossed the finish line just 0.077 seconds in front of Bruce! As someone said later to Bruce, "You held him off for 47 miles... and you couldn't find one more foot?"

I found out the next day that this win put me in the lead in the "TRO Manufacturing Area 5 Central Division CFF Championship" -- but because I did not run the minimum 6 races in the Area 5 series, I was ineligible for the championship! Thrilling, because I had no idea I was even a contender for the title. And yet a little heartbreaking.

The car was still running strong at the end of the race, so I decided to go for broke and run "The Looong Race" the next weekend at Blackhawk. This year-end race is 100 miles, more than twice the typical race distance. Because so many championships are decided before then, people often invite friends to co-drive the event with them. I invited Bruce Lindstrand to drive his old car again.

*Despite what TV racing commentators (and armchair commentators) will claim, hitting wet grass will NOT make the car go faster. If it did, we'd be racing on wet grass, not asphalt! Here's what really happens: Almost any time a car leaves the track, it's skidding or sliding along the asphalt, either trying to stop or trying to make a turn. Skidding and sliding against the asphalt slows the car dramatically. Sliding on grass slows the car only a little bit -- much less than sliding on asphalt. There's a lot of friction between tires and asphalt. There's not much between tires and wet grass. It's the contrast between the deceleration rates that makes it look and feel like the car sped up. In actual fact, all that happened is that the car lost a lot of deceleration. Its true speed will not be any faster after it hits the grass than it was when it left the asphalt. It will continue to slow down, but much less dramatically.
TV cameras perpetuate the myth because the camera operators pan (rotate) the camera to follow the car's motion. The operator compensates for the deceleration rate. When the deceleration rate suddenly changes, the camera operator is caught off-guard, still slowing the camera, and the car appears to "shoot" out of the picture.
And if anyone still believes that cars accelerate when they hit the grass, maybe you can answer this. It takes energy to accelerate. Where does that extra energy come from? Do the individual blades of grass band together to push the car along?