On 2012-03-02 21:04, Larry Colen wrote:
http://motomatters.com/blog/2012/02/16/photographer_s_blog_motogp_story_the_cat.html
Thanks for posting it.
Yep, excellent article.
It reminds me of how when it rains when we're racing Sears Point we
would all head up to turn 2 to watch the start of the I.T. race.
> I'm sure Lefty has his own stories along those lines.
At Road Atlanta, turns three, five, seven, and ten are the hot spots.
But the most spectacular crashes often occur at turns one or twelve.
One and twelve (rightfully) scare a lot of drivers, so they're extra
cautious. Seven is reducing radius and off camber after the apex and
it's easy to let it catch you out.
At Kershaw, turn one because it's a 100* left hander less than 100 yards
after the start line and the green flag. The kink (10) sees more than
its share of hijinks. Every once in a while the last corner (14)
results in someone doing sort of an "alpine" thing for a half mile or so.
I could go on and on. :-)
Oh, and that bit about not watching races for the crashes? It's
nonsense. Racers watch races for the crashes. In order of preference:
1) rear view mirror
2) from the sidelines
3) through the windshield
I'm not much on the "through the windshield" thing, unless I've got a
lot of room to evade. But, as you know, once a car "gets weird", it
could go anywhere. The /worst/ place to see a crash is from the corner
station that has to respond to it. Sometimes that's a bigger PITA than
being the driver. :-)
One of my more memorable racing moments was during driving school in
2004 at Roebling Roads Raceway (Savannah, GA). As is typical of
February schools at Roebling, it rained a lot. We had 18 sessions on
track, 14 of them with some sort of precipitation, raging from mist to
"I can't see twenty feet" downpours.
At one point, it's down to misting, but the track is really wet. Plus
the pavement hasn't been redone for maybe fifteen or twenty years, and
it's really rough. It also has a lot of patches of cement/concrete in
some cases and some sort of "mastic" in others. So you're skating
across water as well as at least three solid surfaces, all with
different traction characteristics.
I've been through turn two exactly the same way, the same position and
speed, for about four laps. Blazing up the straight to turn one on the
next lap, first off I see my brother lose his hood, which goes flying up
about 75 feet in the air, but doesn't slow him down much, or anyone
else, as it lands in the grass off track.
I go around him, through turn one, and get about 2/3's through turn two
when something has changed and I suddenly spin 180 degrees, before I can
even get the clutch disengaged and the brakes engaged. As I look up, I
see my brother bearing down on me in the wet, hoodless. It's now been
about 0.15 seconds. I go "both feet in" (brakes down, clutch down) and
the car instantly reverses direction again. I spin the 'opposite'
direction, so I don't get to see Scott evade me as he goes by. It's now
0.20 seconds, and I'm facing the right direction again, clutch out,
fifth gear, going about 40mph in an acceleration zone. Slam the lever
around a bit and get it into second, dump the clutch, stand on the gas
(it's a 80-90#-ft 12A rotary, after all), fishtail a little bit, and try
to drive while my entire body shakes like hell for about a lap.
--
Doug "Lefty" Franklin
NutDriver Racing
http://NutDriver.org
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