This is Not Going to End Well Part IV

This is Not Going to End Well Part IV

But it Did

It took 4+ years to bring the Siata back from the dead after my major wreck in 1987. It took me a bit longer to regain my composure. While the car was being restored I eased back into race cars, first as a passenger, and then driving. But I could almost taste my discomfort.

I don't recall the exact order of things, but remember riding around Sears Point with Gary Kuntz in his 365 2+2 Ferrari, and with my tummy in knots. This model is known as the “Queen Mother” of Ferraris...it is huge, weighing in at over 4000 pounds and with a nose which seems to go on forever. 

Behnd the wheel you thnk there is no end to that sloping hood

 Gary is a superb and assertive driver, and could get this monster to dance in ways you would think impossible. I did trust him, but I just could not get my nerves under control, and it was not just because I was a passenger and not a driver. I was still...freaked out.

I also recall Gary Winiger and Ernie Mendicki entering me to co-drive a two hour endurance race with them...this too I believe was at Sears Point, though perhaps it was the original “short track” at the SCCA race course at Willows in Northern California, dubbed “Thunderhill.” Each driver was allowed no more than a 30 minute shift, and at least one fuel stop was required, though it could be combined with a driver change. We used Gary's Siata which, while the same model as mine, is a bit different configuration. 

Tiny Taxicab?
Gary Trying to Avoid Being Eaten by a Couple of Monsters and Coronado

Unlike my roadster, the last 20 or so 300BCs were built to meet the minimum FIA requirements tof 50 or more cars in order to be classified as modified production cars rather than prototypes. The first 30 were intended strictly for racing, and had low windscreens, no provisions for a top or side windows, and lacked other amenities or requirements normally found on street cars such as turn signals, door handles, and speedometers. Gary's car was a convertible, with a cutout behind the seats rather than a “turtle deck” like the roadsters, and these included those other items, including a high windshield and a removable top and side curtains. Like some of the race cars, it used the Fiat 1100cc motor, though unlike the roadsters this engine was supplied with the car rather than being purchase separately by those owners desiring to use it.

I was OK on the track driving it...and was a bit surprised by that. Maybe it was because of being a co-driver, or perhaps knowing it was not my car gave me a reason to be extra cautious and to not drive it as assertively as I would race my own vehicle. At any rate I don't recall any discomfort.

Additionally, as the restoration dragged from one year to the next, I acquired a Formula Junior to campaign while waiting. I had become attracted to the purity and ease of maintenance of early open wheeled cars, though my interest had initially been piqued when I first decided to get into vintage racing. One of the first cars I looked at was an Elva MkI Formula Junior. The car had been lengthened for a taller than average driver, and my concerns about what that would do to its handling plus the fact that, particularly since, unlike the photo below, it was white, it looked like a long refrigerator. 

Imagine this in white
With a two foot longer nose

I eventually located a Formula S in Virginia which had been modified “out of the box” for the Junior class, and worked out a satisfactory price and shipping cost to bring it to California, and began racing that, though it had some serious issues which kept me busy...and to an extent unnerved, but more about that in another post. 

The Purest Form of the Automobile
Quantum Formula S/Jr

As noted in the third post about my 1987 incident, the first event after getting the car back wound up with a spin which could easily have ended almost as badly as that disaster. This did nothing for my confidence. As I told Sherri, “this thing is a crap shoot. No matter how well I drive there are things outside my control which can snap up and bite me.” While I had always known that on some level, intellectualizing it is one thing, living it quite another. It was clearly going to take time to be OK with that as well as to regain confidence in the car...I did not ever lose confidence in my own, albeit limited, abilities.

Coronado was especially difficult for me. This is a road course laid out on US Navy airbase runways and taxiways. To protect spectators concrete barriers are erected running the entire length of the main straight, which is at least ¼ mile long. To slow the cars down entering this, again for spectator protection, there is a very low speed and short left/right “chicane” which leads into it. Since this straight is the longest on the course, your speed out of that turn complex translates directly into how quickly you get down the straight and your speed at the end of it, and in a modestly powered car like the Siata there is no way to “finesse” this...you can't make it up by horsepower...since you have very little. Thus you have to take this slow two turn complex, paradoxically,...as fast as you possibly can. And every time I did so my heat was in my mouth wondering what was gong to break and slam me into that very hard wall.

In fact, I watched a lovely and valuable Maserati AG6 do that right in front of me when one of his Borrani wheels, not dissimilar to my own, broke exiting the right hander. He literally scraped the entire left side of the car off along that concrete.

A6GS Maserati Racer

But the more my confidence returned the more I realized what this sport has added to me joy and life. My staff at work always knew when I had just returned from a race weekend...until mid-week I was mellow and relaxed-unusual for me in my high tension tech world. Somehow, literally putting my life on the line, with no place to hide from my own fears or lack of competence, enabled me to view even the tensions of critical software development projects with relative aplomb. They, after all, were only a threat to my job, not my life.

John Surtees was, I believe, the only person to ever win a Motorcycle GP championship as well as a Formula One championship. And it was John who said something like “those who have never risked their life don't truly understand the value of it.” Things are that much sweeter when you realize how fragile and short your own existence really is.

We delude ourselves into thinking somehow that the world is safe and we will live tomorrow just as we do today, but in reality no one is guaranteed tomorrow. The sun will likely come up...but you won't necessarily be there to experience it.

Sitting on the grid in a race car I am always nervous. In fact, at least once each season, usually in the car waiting to go out for the first time in the Spring, it crosses my mind that what I am doing makes no rational sense. “What,” I think, “makes you believe this is a smart thing to be doing?' But my next thought is about competence, skill, and control, Of course I can do this, I recall, and there is no place else I should be at that moment. Centering myself, going through a calming ritual, and focusing totally on exercising the skills I have developed to control myself and a vehicle at levels far beyond that of those in the daily freeway fog, helps me realize just what untapped potential for achievement we all have, if we only are willing to step outside our delusional concept of “safety.” What I am able to master in racing is beyond any level of mastery I feel I've achieved anywhere else, with much higher risk, and equally high personal satisfaction.

The second the car starts to roll towards the “splitter” who directs us into pairs for the parade lap the nerves are gone. To do this, to do it as well as I can and better than many...certainly beyond all who drive daily and think therefore they understand what it takes to control a car, is a state of zen that I think few achieve. At any rate, it is certainly my moment of zen.