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Who Needs Skill When You Got Luck?

Zooming up the Esses

Delaware Region racers Gregg Wilson, Tom Holmes, Bruce Duff and Cris Brady attended the Porsche Club Race at Watkins Glen the weekend of June 16th. Good luck, bad luck, the weekend was full of it at the Porsche Clash at the Glen. Bad luck in that too many racers were afflicted with the dreaded "red mist" and took home with them a 13 month racing probation period. Many racers grabbed second gear when looking for fourth: Mr. Valve meet Mr. Piston. Glad to meet you! However, not all the luck was bad. Here are my examples:

First practice session, only the 3rd lap of the weekend. I'm passing under braking into turn 1 at the end of the main straight. I came in too hot and locked up the tires. I couldn't get them unlocked and the back end started coming around. Quickly, I'm past the point of no return and now it's time for "In a Spin? Both Feet In!". I exited the track backwards, hit the grass and went sliding passenger side sideways, toward the gravel trap. The first gravel "wave" lifted my right side up into the air giving me a nice curving arc. That impromptu flight was rudely interrupted when my 911's right side dug deeply into the gravel. The corner worker told me he saw the undercarriage of my car as it lifted several feet into the air, while saying to himself "Oh s**t!" . He must have been a mind reader, as that was my same exact comment in the car.

Example

The car thumped back safely to the ground with no damage. On the plus side, I no longer had to worry about being underweight for the weekend. I picked up 20-30 lbs of gravel packed into my brake ducts, under my skid plates and any other available surface. I'll be picking them out for the next several months I'm sure.

Score: Pretty Good Luck.

It's Saturday afternoon, the start of the 30 minute sprint race. I'm in the lower middle of the pack following the pace car around the track. The pace car lights come off and it heads into the pits. I come onto the short straight before the right turn onto the front straight. I strain to catch a glimpse of the starter in the tower. Green Flag! Foot to the floor, I hammer down the straight staying outside to the left side of the track. Five cars wide into turn one along with the other 60+ cars. I spot an opening and dive into it. Suddenly cars are spinning just in front of me and cars are going every way trying to avoid hitting them. Cars are running off the track into the dirt on the left, throwing up huge clouds of dust. I dive left to avoid some slowly moving cars and run into a total opaque cloud of dust. The windshield goes white with absolutely no visibility. I can't see anything in front, to the rear or on either side. So, of course, I just kept my foot to the firewall.

Example

My NASCAR moment.

1 or 2 very long seconds later I popped out the other side of the dust cloud. I saw another car in front of me and slipped around his side and continued up into the esses at full throttle leaving the scene of chaos behind.

Score: Amazingly Good Luck.

On Sunday I ran a one-hour enduro that included a mandatory 5 minute pit stop. My plan was to run for 30 minutes and then come in and fuel up. My car has a fuel cell instead of a gas tank. The fuel gauge has to be calibrated by running the tank to empty, tweaking one control to set the full tank mark, and tweaking another control to set it back to empty. Next fill the cell with gas, check the high level mark. Not at the full mark? Run car to empty and repeat. As you can expect, this is a slow process. A process that I still haven't fully finished yet. I start the enduro with the gauge reading just under full. I'm off enjoying myself with a nice Sunday afternoon race (as much as 90 degrees and full nomex can be enjoyable).

Example

About 30 minutes into the race I'm thinking about pitting when a car goes off into the gravel at the Inner Loop. That brings out a full-course yellow and the pace car. Since the pits are closed during a full course yellow, I have to stay out for two laps. Finally the green flag drops just before the pit entrance. Several cars duck into the pit, but not me. I love restarts! I usually can pick off a couple of other racers during them. I sneak by one or two cars caught napping when the flag dropped and dragged raced down into turn 1. Take the inside and take another spot. A couple of C and D class cars take me in the esses and around we go. My strategy is to do a good lap and pit. I'm coming around the off-camber left with the car leaning hard to the right and the engine starts sputtering. Uh-oh, this isn't good.

As the car straightens out, the motor comes back. However this is enough for the guy I previously out-broke in turn 1 to dive under me on the inside. Take the fast left hander and sputter, sputter, sputter. Oh man, I hope I make it to the pits. I throw my fist out the window and get off line and head into the pits. Approaching the speed line I drop to the 30 mph limit and the engine quits. I re-fire it and cruise past the check-in officials and putter down the hot pit-lane to my pit, all the way at the end. 50 feet way from my pit stall, the motor dies and I cruise in silently. Fill 'er up, boys! I'll take 1 and 1/2 jugs. At the 4.5 minute mark I'm back in the car. After a couple of tries, I finally get fuel back to the motor and it restarts. And I'm off for another 20 minutes. If I took one more lap, or if that full course yellow was just a little longer, I probably would have run out of gas a long way from home.

... the motor dies ...

Score: Falling into a manure pile and coming out smelling like roses Good Luck.

Gregg Wilson, last years overall and class F winner, was in the thick of the fight for this years lead. Since Gregg and Tom Holmes were sharing pit space and pit crew (Brian Fugok and myself) we needed to schedule pit stops. Tom was planning to come in at the 30 minute mark and Gregg either 25 or 35 minutes into the race. Tom came in for his stop and zoomed out on his way to capturing 2nd in G class. Meanwhile the 35 minute mark came and went with no Gregg.

Example

40 minutes, still no Gregg.

It seems, around the time for his stop, Gregg found himself with clear track ahead of him and took the opportunity to put some hot laps in.

About 45 minutes we spotted Gregg at the head of pit-lane making his way to us. The Delaware crew fueled his car, washed the windshield and gave the driver cool drinks. At the 20 second mark, we sent him back out onto the track. And here's where Lady Luck visited us. Gregg's competitor for the lead was unaware that the 5 minute minimum stop started when the car passed the check-in at the top of pit lane. He started his stopwatch upon reaching his pit stall, after the slow 30 mph craw down pit lane. That added about 45 seconds to his stop. Greg went on to take 1st in class F and the overall win. Gregg's margin of win: 17 seconds.

Score: 99% Driver skill (1% excellent pit crew ...) and maybe just a little bit of
Good Luck!

There were numerous other examples of good luck: torrential rains holding off to literally just after our sprint race finished; needing spacers to fix my tire rub and the first person I asked had them and lent them to me (thanks Dr. John!); needing 1 tire and Brian sweet talking it from the Hoosier Tire guy even though somebody else had reserved it.

I think I've used up my Good Luck allotment and will need to recharge it. I think I'll just do Drivers Ed events for a while. Luckily my next race is the Summit Point race in September. That should be plenty of time to drink plenty sacrificial offerings of Guinness Stout.

- Cris Brady
1973 911 RS - Class E
Delaware PCA Region Webmeister

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