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.”