I Dedicate This Prototype X Win To... Substack
I Dedicate This Prototype X Win To... Substack
The accidental fire extinguisher activation at race start? That's on me
There are two red buttons on the vestigial dashboard of a Gen3 Radical SR8. One is the starter button; the other activates the on-board fire extinguisher. If you stall the car in grid when it’s your turn to roll out for the race, you should hit the starter button, which is the smaller of the two red buttons. Any veteran of Radical’s high-end sports racers knows this.
Since I am only a veteran of crummy little Radical single-seaters, I did not really know this, and since I was already panicked at the idea of starting the 10:30 Sunday qualifying race with three Trans-Am racers ahead of me and two behind, none of whom could even see me from the elevated and fully protected drivers seats within their 3200-pound, 700-horsepower missiles, and since I had already been told by SCCA officials that “We don’t really want you in this race,” I blindly stabbed at the larger of the two red buttons.
At least it cooled me off a bit.
I realized my mistake about one second into the proceedings. Reader, at that point I seriously considered just giving up and waving all 23 of the cars behind me past. Maybe join the race from the back, the way I’d done for Saturday’s race, where I rolled out in dead last and finished in fourth. I really didn’t want to take a start surrounded by a wall of indifferent steel anyway. And now the whole grid was laughing at me. I let all that cowardice, all that self-pity, all that despicable weakness seize me for another full second, while the GT1 Camaro behind me impatiently revved its engine directly into my skull.
Then I started the car.
And stalled it. Again.
One more time. It caught, I rolled, and off we went.
*record scratching to a halt* Yep, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how an unemployed fifty-year-old man with no previous experience of this sort found himself in this situation. Well, it’s all your fault. Don’t worry, I’ll explain.