Photos from October 8

I just got a CD of photos from Brad Ellingson, who attended the Fall Sprints with his digital camera instead of his racecar. Brad, I'm now torn between hoping you get your car back out next year and hoping you keep snapping away with the camera. Thanks!

The shot of the weekend. As I entered corner 3, the corner station was waving the yellow flag, which usually means a car spun on track. As I came around the corner, I saw the blue FV stalled sideways on the track and I thought he was closer to the inside of the track. I committed to a path going around the front of his car and then discovered that there was no track there. Brad caught the moment in all of its lawnmowing glory. Alex Murray (#45) can be seen learning from my mistake.



It took some minutes of head-scratching for me to realize that this shot was taken a fraction of a second before the photo above. My hand was in the air as a signal to the drivers behind me that I was slowing down, there was real danger ahead, and they should look for a way through it.

Look at where the car is on the track and the direction it's pointed. Now look back at the other photo and compare where the car went. The difference is called drifting. As the car goes through the corner, it's pointed farther around the corner than its actual path of travel. If I had been travelling in the same direction the car was pointing (instead of drifting to the outside of the corner), I'd have speared the FV in the side.

I like the contrast in this one. Car #55 is a Formula 500 (once known as F440). These cars have snowmobile engines and the original snowmobile primary drive belt system. They use tiny little tires, but they weigh less than a Formula Ford and put out close to the same power through a CVT (Constantly Variable Transmission) -- sort of a cross between a go-kart clutch and an automatic transmission. They don't have to shift gears, and their engines are always in the peak power band, so they accellerate quickly and have a very high top speed. They're fast, but I just can't consider them real race cars because they don't have a gearbox.

I hate to end on an insult to another class of racecar, so I'll mention that I will be pulling the engine this week, and I have a line on a gearbox for sale down south. I'll keep you posted on both as things progress.