Where the Old God's Played

Two things are different at a track like Sears Point (Infineon for those of you under thirty.) The first is that, being an older track, it has little run-off with lots of chances to wad up your car. The second is that, unlike the new club tracks, it is just dripping with history.

To grab the same corners as the new gods have done once a year since ’88 is one thing. Today it’s Stewart, Montoya, and Gordon’s playground. But back in the day there was a race on this track where Dan Gurney held off Mark Donahue and Mario Andretti to take a win in a wingless USAC Indy car. I was in the fifth grade at Seaside elementary school at the time, you, dear reader, may not have been born.

So while there is a lot to say about driving a track with history, nevertheless it is often better to praise the Gods than to visit the Olympian heights. It’s too damn cold up there for me.

An example? Our Mazda GT’s go to Infineon once a year, I first went in 2006, skipped 2007, and returned this year. But both years my very first hot lap of the weekend was a race lap and this time I can’t even blame weather god Freyr, since unlike 2006 the weather was perfect all weekend. No, this time the culprit was mostly my own stupidity.

It was a crowded weekend, with NASA setting an all time record for entries at 455. To make room for all those cars they started off by cutting the morning warm-up to just ten minutes while combining three race groups into one session. Then the race gods smote the qualifying session, a red flag cut it down to the point where I never got up to speed.

(Paul's Qualifying Session)

So by the will of the weather gods or just bad luck, neither year gave me the chance to pick out any marks or really have a clue as to what the car was going to do before the race. It is never a good idea to have your first hot lap be a race lap, and this weekend I proved that in spades.

I got a very good start for the Saturday race and went cleanly through all the way to the carousel right on Aaron’s backside, in third place I believe. I had mixed it up a little bit with Aaron during the shortened qualifying, with both of us being held up by slower cars at various times and degrees, but it seemed that I could take him in the esses, turns eight to ten, if I could stay close enough to him going into turn seven. I also knew that Aaron had the chance to run the non-NASA practice day on Friday and so I planned to use him as a reference for some brake points until I could get by. That is, of course, where the first hot lap being a race lap led me astray. I had no mark of my own for any brake points since this was my first full-tilt boogey drive into these corners in two years and using Aaron’s brake point wasn’t the most brilliant idea I've ever had, and that is saying something.

You see my car is older and I’ve been too cheap to get the new, lighter fiberglass and sundry, so when we weighed the cars at the start of the season it turned out my car was two hundred and thirty pounds heavier than Aaron’s brand new car. I forgot that and well… you do the math.

I was at threshold braking going into turn seven and looking like I was about to rear end Aaron. Obviously I couldn’t turn and he was right on the line for his entry, which blocked my way to the run off. The exit of the carousel, leading onto that straight before seven is uphill and gives the car a bit more stick, but when it flattened out just before the turn in point I started losing the rears. I tried modulating the brake pressure to get them rolling again but couldn’t do what I needed to do, that is, I really needed to let up on the brakes entirely for a split second to get the rears rolling again and let the car overshoot, using the run-off to live another day, but Aaron was just an inch off my nose and still slowing for the corner. The car started a wiggle and as soon as it got a wee bit sideways, both the right front and right rear started blowing enormous plumes of smoke as, against my will, I slowly started to pivot. It was that pivot that kept me from rear ending Aaron.

I was sweating bullets at this point since pretty much the whole field of Mazda GT’s were just a few inches away and I had little control over my car. But just a second or so into the spin I thought I’d clear it, spinning off into the turn seven run off and getting a chance to gather in the car and resume the race at the end of the pack. But the racing gods decided to spend some of their wrath on me. As I let up on the brakes to let the car get farther away from the apex, thinking that the farther from the apex I was the easier I would be to avoid, I felt the thump.

Tom D, who built my car, was right on my tail going into seven and couldn’t duck to the apex; instead, unknown to me he tried to go around my outside and almost made it. In fact, he would have made it if I’d kept the tires locked up. As it was I felt the thump and saw pieces of my rear bumper scatter themselves in front of me. Everybody else got away, with Josh especially making a very fast and fine avoidance maneuver.

Thorpe owes me this win since I managed to scatter the rest of the field so badly that they were unable to catch him. But somehow I doubt if I’ll get a trophy for that. At least not one I would admit to owning.

Later, when inspecting the damage it was clear that Tom’s car was damaged much more than mine was. My rear clip was bent which put me out for the weekend, but Tom lost the drive-train from the driveshaft back and his right rear suspension. If fact, if I wasn't smelling a lot of gas I might have been tempted to continue rather than just driving back to the pits since the car felt a lot better than it looked. That evening Tom had Leroy and Jose take my car’s good rear and put it on his car, so at least one of us could run on Sunday. But I was done.

It was obviously a bit more than just disappointing, but being cursed like I am when I try to muscle my way into the old gods playground, I suppose I should at least be thankful that we both walked away physically unscathed, although it wasn't a very hard hit and our cars are certianly built to take it even if it was.

I didn't hang in for the Sunday race, but from what I hear it was a real barn-burner. One of the best ever, so I'm really looking forward to getting some video going for that one.