With God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly...

Is probably the funniest one-liner ever developed in a sitcom. The old WKRP show had a narrative describing their Les Nesmith character tossing live turkeys out the side of a plane as a Thanksgiving Day promotion, all while the shocked announcer on the ground did a Hindenburg style, “Oh the humanity of it” running commentary describing the poor birds plummeting to the ground. When it was all over, all Les could do was swear he really thought that turkeys could fly. Anyway, flying turkeys is what came to mind when we were grouped with the little Legends cars. Here and I thought they’d be fun. It’s not my goal to badmouth other groups or cars or drivers or anything, and everybody knows that anybody can have a bad day, but thankfully we were moved by race time Saturday to group B with the Super Unlimited and Camaro-Mustang Challenge cars. Perhaps it was just the large field, or perhaps we just don’t mix well with the Legends cars, but I couldn’t get anything done when we were grouped with them. Of course it could also be that they were running 2:16-2:50’s and we were running two minutes flat.

The SU’s and CMC cars were a much better fit, with the CMC’s running 2:05-2:10.

No practice day, but despite not being able to do my routine during the morning practice in the sea of yellows, by race time I knew my car was good, maybe running a bit rich. I started toward the back with Aaron in the #5 car and Tom D. in the #77. It was a good start, although since we were taking the same green as the SU group we wound up a bit bunched up behind their trailers. That caused Tom, Aaron and I, as well as Josh in the #35 car, to get pinched off from the rest of our field behind a pair of Ferrari F355’s that were very fast in a straight line, but who were driving a bit daintily around the corners. At a hundred and fifty grand apiece I’d probably be a bit dainty with one myself. I remember thinking, “Whatever else you do, don’t dent the nice Ferrari.”

Josh and Tom had no such issues with Josh getting a touch sideways at the top of nine, going for the Ferrari and me at the same time and managing to pull it off despite the drifting demo, which in turn left a door wide open for Tom to follow Josh and take me, but not the Ferrari.

Then Aaron got around me on the next lap, under braking into turn nine, so it was suddenly get with the program time for me. I realized I was just plain going too darn slow. Mentally I was still practicing and getting ready rather than racing. So I shook it off, picked up the pace and got back around Aaron the next time into turn nine and planned on catching up to the field. Problem is, our cars are so evenly matched that if you lose five seconds, behind somebody like that Ferrari, there is no way you’re going to see the rest of the field again. The other problem I had was while Aaron was still trying to learn the track, he wasn’t exactly leaving me alone in my futile attempt to pursue the field either. So we did have a lot of fun in the back, giving each other a race.

With about two-thirds of the race done, Aaron started dropping back, relieving the pressure while I had caught another Ferrari. He was probably two or three seconds off my pace, but I was just motoring around for some fun by then like a dog with his tongue hanging out, sticking his head out the window, so I wasn’t going to do anything heroic to get by him when the lead American Iron driver in his extreme Mustang slowly came up on both of us over the space of three or four laps. I let him by, staying a bit wide and braking a bit early going into nine, hoping that he might push the Ferrari out of the way so I could try a full tilt boogey lap or two at the end of the race, but no such luck. Just like me he caught the Ferrari but didn’t get by it. He did do an odd salute after the start finish, one finger on each hand, which was a bit uncalled for; even if the Ferrari was racing out of class and blocking a bit, the cars behind him weren’t racing with anybody in class either. To me, no harm… no foul.

Anyway, back up front the race went on, and went pretty well by most accounts. Thorpe is always in great form at Thunderhill, the track seems to suit him, and took the win over Bob, Josh, and then Jim. I’ll post something about the guys up front after I get a look at their video. Tom meanwhile didn’t read my track notes and so he didn’t know the finish line was all the way down past the pit wall. He thought he had enough time on me, after the white flag, to skip the cool down lap and cross the finish line in the pit lane. So the track elves plan worked and I picked up an undeserved spot since technically Tom never crossed the finish line and handed me and Aaron a full lap on a golden platter. I probably shouldn’t have broken the news to him since I might need a few more places when we go back up to Thunderhill in August.

As I understand it the same thing happened to Thorpe, who handed first place to Jim at the last second by lifting at the starters stand on Sunday, with Aaron filling out the last podium spot. It does pay to read my track notes now doesn’t it? To take a little extra credit you’ll notice that the second sentence of the third paragraph of my Thunderhill track notes goes, “The starters stand and start line are not in the same place as the finish line.”

Overall as a group we were really fast. Both Josh and Dave went under two minutes a lap averaging over ninety miles an hour, with the spread going from just under two minutes to the 2:05’s and a lot of cars bunched up at close to two minutes flat. Compared to the Super-Unlimited Ferrari’s which were running 2:10’s. There was a monster Trans-am car in our run group doing 1:50’s, but otherwise we were the fastest guys on the track.

I did spot one gaping hole in my track notes. For some reason I always see the 14-15 combo as being two right ninety degree corners, which is pretty far from the truth, 14 has a lot less angle to it than fifteen does and I was rudely reminded of that after sliding around after over-cooking it the first time around at speed. Our cars have a balance to them that requires at least some throttle, in fact you adjust how the car is tracking around the corner using the throttle as much as the wheel. Over-cook the corner like I did and you’ll get a lot of well deserved understeer since obviously you can’t get on the throttle while already cornering too fast...

I have the Willow-Springs movie night clip posted, and while I do need a lot more practice making movies and we need a lot more cameras, it still turned out Ok. I have some video from Thunderhill to get started on, which you’ll see on line next month after I show it at Sears Point (Infineon for those of you under thirty.) By the time we get to Sears I’m sure I’ll have a lot more to work with, and I’ll manage to increase the production value a bit, but meanwhile enjoy the Week One video.