Weekend Update: Running Out Of Luck
Well, that was an interesting weekend.
My attempt to repeat my overall win at AER's debut race ran into a couple of snags, to put it mildly.
Our RX-7 was a wicked and unpredictable handler in the rain. On Saturday, I lost four laps when I went into the gravel in Turn Eight and just sat there for nearly twenty minutes until being pulled out. Although our pace for the dry part of the race was unmatched, it wasn't enough --- we finished in eighth place, five laps behind the winning #747 BMW that Mark and I drove at CMP earlier this year.
On Sunday we took a wet start again but this time we had a strategy. I hung back off the leaders to avoid the inevitable first-lap crashes, one of which claimed the RallyBaby "M3ti". Then I increased my pace to match Mike Skeen, who was running up front. Even the idiotic failure of a driver in front of me to drive back up to the safety car didn't break our strategy. We were running in clear air and making time on the leaders. We had the pace for an easy third and possible second place...
...but then a BMW spun in "The Boot" and hit me hard enough to put me into the Armco, damaging our front and rear suspension and putting us out of the race. The driver apologized and accepted fault --- he was a nice guy who just got in over his head on the still-slick concrete section to the inside --- but it was just absolutely devastating to lose the chance to podium.
For me, however, the biggest "moment" of the weekend was when I lost the back of the RX-7 in fifth gear halfway up the Esses. Longtime motorsports fans will recall that Francois Cevert was killed there around the time I was born, in exactly the same fashion: a bump in the concrete turned his car and he went backwards through the Armco. I was doing about 110mph when the car stepped out all the way to the steering lock.
What happened next was this: I held the car at full lock until I was past the inside Armco then I allowed it to spin to reverse and steered it backwards into the run-off beneath the grandstands. It was the most masterful piece of driving I've ever seen in club racing.
And I had nothing to do with it. I made no conscious decisions. I performed no miraculous driving, no micrometer-precise adjustments. Someone, or something, else was in control of the car.
Had it just been up to me and my imperfect ability, I'd have been writing this from the hospital, by blinking my eyes while someone pointed at a chart of the alphabet.
If you believe in luck, then that was all the luck to which I'm entitled between now and... well, a very long time from now.
I don't believe in luck.
What else is there to tell you? Oh yes: it was very cold. Cold enough that Mark wore his race suit all the time. Even, as you can see, at the hotel. I'm guessing he's not going to brag about his driving but the fact is that for the third time in a year I asked him to get into an unfamiliar car at an unfamiliar racetrack and deliver, which he did, yet again. He ain't heavy, he's my brother.