The Days Following A Race Weekend

The Days Following A Race Weekend

There is a mellowness associated with the days following a race weekend, where everything has gone well, which is difficult to explain but which is one of the most satisfying feelings I have ever experienced. It is beyond just gratifying exhaustion about a job well done. It is beyond joy and actually seems a very quiet type of ecstasy wherein the world seems suffused with softness and gentle light.

Driving near your own limits and that of your tiny jewel of a car, a hand built tribute to talent, beauty, and passion, requires such intensity of focus, concentration, and sheer mental and physical will that, when it is over, you have literally nothing left to give. It is beyond the fall off an adrenaline rush, which is often experienced as a physical crash. It is beyond the more subtle aspects of a drug high. It is, simply put, beyond anything else I have ever felt.

Leading, but not for long
Everything behind me has a bigger motor and more power

After every nerve, every sense, every fiber of awareness has been stretched and tested for turn after high speed turn, lap after lap, session after session, you look back and realize just how intense it really was, and how alive it made you feel. Not terrified and, not after 35 or more years of doing it, even scared or, once the wheels start the car moving off the pre-grid, nervous, but still so alert and attuned to every input of your own car and of those around you, you think again about just how much sensory input you had to assess micro-second by micro-second...a thousand decisions made so fast that it was your brain and nervous system acting almost autonomously, with very little time to consciously think through what was happening and what you needed to do.

Just consider...where are the flag stations and what are the flaggers doing? What is the track surface like? What is on it-oil? Water? Sand? Gravel? What do I need to do to set up safely and quickly for this next turn? Where am I going to come out of it and who is coming up on me from behind? What do I want or need to do about them to be safe and not impede my own progress? What is that cloud of dust up ahead telling me? Did someone go off? Where are they and what is happening? Is this car in front of me going into turn 3 too fast? Is his back end coming around? Will he collect it without spitting himself across the track in front of me and into the wall? Will he pirouette backwards across the track in front of me if he can't collect it? Where will it be safe to go in that event? Why did my car's back end not only start to come out, as it always does, but actually wiggled on that turn? Is that oil that that Maserati is spitting all over my windscreen? It smells like he is burning it. I need to watch for a slick trail going into turn 4 with the sun on it. Aha! There it is! Stay out of it!

This and a thousand other details. Is the car “happy?” How does the engine sound? I need to go back to double clutching on upshifts as if I don't the gears don't mesh smoothly. Is there a cough going through 5000 RPM? Did I imagine that? How does the exhaust sound? Are the tires gripping still (given that they are barely wider than bicycle tires in the first place and are street radials and the only ones which fit the car)?

It never seems like much to explain to people that I am only on the track four times a weekend, for a total of about an hour track time and perhaps 70 miles total, and at a track like Laguna the highest speed I touch, perhaps in three or four places per lap, is just under 100MPH.

“Big deal!” they might think. But look at the map of that track or any other and think about the 12 numbered turns, seven of which are 90 degrees or less, and all but one of which are third or fourth gear high speed thrillers, and all of which are taken at speeds for exceeding anything that which anyone with a brain would try on a similar public road.

Then add in some pretty severe elevation changes and some segments which will try and throw you off the track if you go too wide. Finally, dump in a sharp left/right complex (The famous Corkscrew) which has the steepest drop in the shortest distance of any track in the world-like falling off a five story building...blindfolded! Brake and shift 11 or so times a lap... in a little over 2 ¼ minutes, times eight or nine laps a session. Some 90 applications of each, four times a weekend, with all that attention riveting information pouring at you constantly. Except for aerial combat I can't think of anything as intensive. Maybe professional ice hockey? At any rate it is a truly unique experience, and one which is immensely satisfying when it goes right.

But it is addictive....a disease for which there is no known cure. Or as Peter Egan once said “Racing makes an addiction to heroin seem like a vague thirst for something salty.” 

Gil Nickel

Gil Nickel

I suspect most people knew Gil through his ownership of Far Niente Winery in the Napa Valley. Perhaps a sub-segment of that crowd was also aware of his participation and success in vintage racing. Even fewer, myself included, might have been aware that he was an avid motorcyclist. I only learned of that this year by reading one of Peter Egan's motorcycle magazine columns, gathered together in a book called “Leanings 3.”

But I knew Gil first of all through the old Bay Area Region of the Ferrari Owners Club. So what else is new? By far most of the people I know (or, in some sad cases, knew) in the world of toy cars was through my membership in that group. Those I did not meet there, even after joining the vintage racing brother (and in a few unfortunately all too rare cases “sister”) hood and adding to the population of driving obsessed nuts of all types, I was nonetheless bound to like some sort of rare earth magnet attraction to a steel bar, through various car clubs or introductions, by friends who knew of my “addiction” and took every opportunity to link me to others bitten by a similar insanity.

When I met Gil he was new to the Napa wine business and was turning the abandoned property he and his brother bought into what quickly became a beautiful and award winning winery. I learned the family was from Oklahoma and was in the plant nursery business...the jungle drums of the FOC said they had made their fortune landscaping freeways in Texas. At any rate, he had two interesting Ferraris at the time. One was a poster car for a peninsula Ferrari shop called “Cavallino Rampante,' a black Lampredi engined Superfast if my memory has not totally failed. The other was a similarly “odd” beast, a yellow 340 roadster. If anything an even more rare car than the black beauty.

Gil was the classic soft-spoken template for the part of America he came from, with sandy blonde hair and a round kind of cherubic face and broad, open smile. While the winery bucked the Napa trend of open tasting rooms and could only be visited by invitation, Sherri and I were there a number of times for FOC gatherings. As one would expect, given his background, it was beautifully laid out and landscaped.

The winery and residence were old, stone buildings with warm wooden interiors. Outside Gil and his brother had cut off the top of a hill and put in a sunken entertainment pit large enough to easilly hold a hundred or more guests. It was shaded by a large gazebo and bordering the pit were benches, counters, and cooking facilities. Of course there was plenty of wine as well. Far Niente quickly built a reputation based on an award winning chardonnay sold under what was said to be the most complex label in the wine business. Later an even pricier cabernet was added to the offerings. Though by today's standards in the US these don't sound overly costly, $40 and $100 repectively in the mid 1970s for California wines definitely “pushed the envelope.”

Then, like many of us in the FOC, Gil discovered vintage racing. Gil obviously had more money than I did, and when he jumped in (slightly after I made that plunge) he went in with nothing spared. I was still putting the Siata together I guess, and was parked in front of the old Frey Racing store in Santa Clara, contemplating how such small purchases, barely filling a single shopping bag, could have possibly sucked up so much money, when Gil came out with his arms full of goodies...driver gear as best I recall. Even then he had a box truck with “Gil Nickel Racing,” featuring a yellow curved road on a black background, lettered on it. Later there was a much bigger 53 foot trailer and tractor rig...as I said, he fell for the sport in a huge way.

Gil fell hard for Lotus race machinery...he obviously liked yellow as his Lotus 11, 26R, and 27 all were painted about the same color as the 340 Ferrari. Gil had a lot of other cars but, oddly, I never saw the barn with the full collection, though I was aware there was much else there besides the Ferraris and the race cars. I once drove a 4.2 E-Type Jaguar coupe of John Lewis's, which Gil later bought, for example.

Gil became wildly successful in racing, becoming European Vintage Racing Champion at one point...long before the US got involved in such foolishness as “vintage championships.” But it took the article in “Leanings 3” for me to learn he was an avid motorcyclist.

I wish I had known. We could have swapped even more lies than we did about racing. Gil died of malignant melanoma at the relatively young age of 64. His wife Beth continues to run Far Niente to this day. You can read a bit about him and the place here:http://travelcuriousoften.com/curious-thirsty/far-niente-a-vintage-love-story/.