| American Road Race of Champions |
 |
 |
| American Road Race of Champions |
|
|
|
|
2004 Races November |
|
|
Working the ARRC 2004 We watched the ARRC from our new favorite seat in the house, one of Road Atlanta’s corner stations. Turn #3 didn’t provide nearly as much mayhem as turn #10 did last year (remember the exploding Corvette?), but it still kept us busy most of the time. Bob McCall was our able Corner Captain. We also worked with Randy and Lana on Saturday, and Mike on Sunday. (Sorry guys, we didn’t catch your last names!) This year’s drivers were pretty well behaved. The most exciting moment was Mike Collins’ burning Miata (see notes below). There was the usual assortment of spins, farming expeditions, and breakdowns. For a while, the motorcycle chicane to the left of #3 looked like a used racecar lot, as disabled cars waited for tows back to the paddock. The corner stations around us had their hands full! Fellow Chattanooga Region members Heyward and Amy Wagner, and Joshua Morgan were busy, busy, busy at Turn #4. Every time we looked downstream, we could see yellow flags waving. Fire trucks and ambulances were called more than once, but the only major injuries of the weekend were to sheet metal. Our teachers/colleagues from the ARRC last year, Bob and Pat Ziner, were on the ‘Net a lot at Turn #1. Another buddy from last year, Harry Kulp, worked #7, and Scott and Doug Franklin worked #12. Funny how every year we make more friends. Speaking of friends: Bill, Gail, Jamie, and Will all stopped by the station to say “Hi” at various times on Sunday. Bill Perry worked long hours in the Tech shed on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Gail helped on Sunday with recording car weights after the Enduro. As Tech Steward, Bill declared that a combination of Jamie Hamilton’s five-alarm chili and low-carb chocolate ice cream was a legal substitute for racing fuel. As far as the racing went, Will, Vesa, Gareth Rebstock, Scott Giles and Chuck Reynolds put on the best show of the weekend. All five ITC drivers ran nose to tail for most of their 20-lap race. You never knew who was going to be leading each time they came around. What an awesome, clean race! We ran into Kenn Walker Sunday afternoon and he was wishing he’d run the ITC race just to play with all those guys. Spec Miata was far better behaved than most people expected. Bob Stretch pretty well ran away from the crowd, but got busted in impound afterwards.
Working corners is a blast, and it always provides driving lessons. Here are some of the things we learned this year: Practice exiting your racecar in an emergency! Miata driver Mike Collins did an incredible job when he discovered his car was on fire coming out of Turn #2. He pulled up and stopped right in front of the #3 station. He got out of his belts and car in about 3 seconds. We passed him a fire extinguisher through the fence and he had the flames out before we could crawl through to help. Great job, Mike! If you’re driving a Thunder Roadster and a faster, more skilled driver in a different class is on your tail, let him by. IT Truck driver, Fletcher Williams, got held up for numerous laps behind the aforementioned Roadster. Fletcher was faster in the turns, but he couldn’t make his passes stick when they got to the back straight. The Roadster finally solved the frustrating problem by wrecking hard in turn five. (It’s not cricket to hold back a faster driver. Read Randy Pobst’s article in this months Sportscar) If you’re the leader in a dicing match with another car, and you get caught behind a slower racer, pass the slow guy before you go into a yellow flag zone. The guy you’re dicing with will have no choice other than to stay behind the slower car until he’s out of the zone. We saw this strategy work beautifully. If you spin, both feet in! An SPO shootout Corvette lost it in #3. Instead of pressing his clutch and brake, he tried to correct and spun off into the track right tire wall. He got back to the pits, but was out of the race. If he’d put both feet in and skidded straight until he stopped, he probably would have gone off into the grass and been able to keep on racing. There is no doubt about it: the ARRC is a BIG show! When everything was said and done, well over 200 cars turned a cumulative total on the order of 285 racing laps. Many more laps were run during practice and qualifying, and some of the cars competed in as many as three separate races over the course of the weekend. There were even paid-at-the-gate spectators! At any level of participation, it makes a person feel proud to be a part of it. Already, we can’t wait for next year… -- Art Thompson & Ruth Cartlidge |
||
November 15, 2004
The
SPO shootout on Sunday was an interesting concept, though the race turned
out largely to be survival of the fittest racecar. A field of only nine
ground-pounders started the lonnnnnnng, 30-lap sprint race. Too much
horsepower caused almost half the field to break or wreck before things
were through. Consequently, the beginning of the race was “watch the pack
scream through the turn, then wait a minute and a half for them to come
back through again”, and the end of the race, after the survivors had
spread themselves out, was “here comes a car every so often”. Staying
power was the key. Butch Kummer moved from 6th to 3rd place, simply by
driving consistently and not breaking down. 
