Video of the Week: Scary Lime Rock Crash

I hope my parents aren't watching because here is a rather unpleasant crash at Lime Rock Park featuring the exact same number 34 car that      I drove earlier that season in racing school!  Crazy!

Thankfully everyone was all right, demonstrating the safety of the circuit and of the Skip Barber Formula Cars.  Enjoy the carnage from multiple views!

The Automobiliac goes to Racing School Part 2

Way back in May, I ran Part One of my account of going to Skip Barber racing school. It took me a while to finish it and edit the video footage, but here is the long-promised Part Two!

DAY 2

After a good night’s sleep, I awoke the second day and looked outside. The ground was wet, but it appeared not to be raining. In this part of Connecticut, the mornings are usually damp, but the moisture quickly burns off as the sun comes out and warms up the ground.  After a breakfast that I ate in haste --I always have trouble enjoying my food when I am full of nervous energy--I drove to the track, again enjoying the marvelous views and smells of the lush greenery.  Arriving at the track, we started the day with some classroom time. One of the quirkiest aspects of the classroom sessions is how many different acronyms you have to remember.  There’s TTO (trailing throttle oversteer)  CPR ( Correction, Pause, Recovery) and my favorite of all was the admonition to stay off the FGR (the Friggin Guard Rail).  On the first day, R.B. had given us a rather amusing lecture about the importance of locking up all wheels once you have definitively lost control (“When you spin, both feet in”).  This allows your car to move in a predictable way so that the next guy behind you knows exactly where your car is going and can take evasive action.  But R.B. made it clear that it was best to stay on the track as much as possible. “Because,” he said, pausing in his whiteboard diagram to draw in the inner and outer guardrails, “outside the track….there’s stuff.”

Now, notice I never mentioned doing any braking exercises in part one. That’s because paradoxically, we didn’t focus on that skill until now.  "Threshold Braking" is an art form that has become largely outmoded in the top echelon of motor racing due to the use of advanced ABS and stability control systems.  But in our comparatively primitive cars, we practiced braking at the last possible instant (at a cone placed on the front straight) as hard as possible.  Then, just as the front tires were on the verge of lockup, we had to learn to modulate brake pressure. The goal here was to come to a complete stop in the shortest possible distance with minimal tire smoke, and without flat-spotting the tires.  I had a lot of fun with this exercise and got the hang of it quicker than I expected.  But then they upped the ante.

Now, instead of threshold braking in a straight line, we had to do it as we started the corner’s entry.  This meant trying to turn and brake at the same time.  I had some serious mess-ups here, including accidentally hitting the gas and brake simultaneously, which is a common problem in beginners due to the confined footwell.  Rob looked down at me with a neutral expression, as I sat in the cockpit sheepishly.  “Do you know what you did wrong?” he said.  I nodded and admitted my folly, and it was back to try again.  I started to figure it out, but was pretty glad when the exercise was over.

The next exercise entailed outbraking a phantom opponent’s car.  The instructors set up a cluster of cones right before the chicane to represent the other car.  That they called the cluster of cones “Danica,” and told us, “now imagine you are making a pass on Danica” –which had the desired effect of causing the entire classroom to break out in peals of laughter.  The idea was to imagine you are following Danica all the way down the back straight, right on her tail, as it were.  Then, just as the braking zone is reached, you were to pull out, so to speak, from behind her draft and brake alongside her (the cone cluster), then turn into the correct racing line. 

So we got in the cars and tried our best to make a successful pass on Danica.  This is what you can see in the video clip.  You’ll notice a cluster of cones to the left of the track at the entry of the chicane.  I have to say now I was really starting to get a great feeling in the car.  The initial nerves I had were wearing away, and now that we had done the braking exercises, I really started to feel like I could push it. Plus, we were now not limited in our revs for most of the lap.  So hurtling down the back straight around 90mph and braking down from 4^th to 2^nd gear while blipping the throttle was just about heaven. I felt like I was really driving a racing car now!  Feeling my body press into the harness under threshold braking was an awesome feeling that I had never experienced before in a road car.  That combined with the sound of the engine as I snicked down two gears, careened through the chicane, then blasted up the hill at full throttle was nothing short of intoxicating.  I started to try braking later and later, and soon I found myself getting the tail a little loose in the entry and had to correct with opposite lock.  At my next appointment with the Stop Box, Rob playfully admonished me via radio “Bradley, your hair is not on fire! You don’t need to drive like it is. Just calm down and try to do the exercise precisely and cleanly.”

While group 2 was doing their exercise, and we were out of the cars, we drove with the instructors to various vantage points on the track to watch. At this point, we noticed a rather threatening cold front moving in over the hills.  We debated the meaning of this approaching cold front, but as group 2’s session came to a close, the meaning became clear as the wind began to pick up in a major way.  Quietly, we got in the cars for our turn as rain began to fall.  As I pressed the starter button, I saw a fork of lighting over the hills and thought to myself…this is probably a bad idea.  Now, the cockpit is warm and cozy enough that a little rain is not a big deal, but by the time we left the pits, the rain was coming down hard and fast, and the gusty wind was now blowing sticks and leaves across the pavement.  I said to myself “Ok, buddy just take it easy.  Try to remember the wet line they showed us yesterday.”  The cars were spaced out enough that driving in a wall of spray was not an issue. But I was on tenterhooks the whole time, recalling how easily the car came unstuck yesterday on the wet track.  All of the bravado I had mustered in the previous session ebbed away leaving behind a feeling of hyperfocused concern.  After my first lap was over, I started to relax a tiny bit, because I had now at least seen the conditions at each point in the track.  But as I came out of the right hander onto the back straight, I felt tiny pin prickly feelings on my chest and shoulders.  Small white dots began to burst into liquid form on my visor, and I realized I was driving through hail!

“You guys really wussed out this time,” Bruce and R.B. agreed when we got out of the cars soaking wet and grateful to be alive.  It was true.  Rather than take this as an opportunity to really see what was possible in the rain, all of us, myself included, had basically just driven around the track like we were in a Rose Bowl parade.  But self preservation is a strong instinct that has to be kept in check sometimes if you really want to go fast. And I don’t think any of us had come close to achieving that control yet.  As I drove home that evening, I was shocked at the amount of downed trees and other mayhem the tempest had caused.  And I concluded that wuss or no wuss, it was good to be home safe.

Day 3

The last day was about as perfect as you could really ask for in the Berkshires.  The previous day’s storm had cleared the way for a brilliantly cloudless blue sky.  Today was the last day of classes, and we would finally get to do open lapping with no rev limit! I reflected on my previous two days, and couldn’t believe how much progress I had made. And not just me; all my classmates had really gotten comfortable in the cars too. Some were faster than others, but I had to sort of marvel at the Skip Barber method because on the face of it, it seems sort of crazy to let ordinary people loose in race cars after just 2 days of training.  Now, maybe my class was more disciplined than average, but I knew we’d all do just fine when we got out on the track by ourselves.  Now since this article has gotten pretty long, I’ll just skip ahead to the good part. 

When it came time, each group had two open sessions out on the track.  I tried to savor every moment.  For the first session, I had a camera mounted on my rollbar, so the video attached is my best lap from the first session.  My laptime was a 1:06.4.  Now, I am hoping I was a tad faster in the second session, but even if I wasn’t, I am still content with this level of accomplishment for my first time.  To put this in perspective, the pole time at a recent Skip Barber race using these same cars was something in the low 57s, but they were racing on slicks, not the BF Goodrich road tires I was using. So am like 9 or 10 seconds off that pace.  Which is pretty good for a novice, but is an eternity in racing terms.

Driving the race car as fast as I could was to oscillate between feeling of complete control, and slight intimidation.  In the slower section at the beginning of the lap, I was putting the car through the corners really hard, feeling a lot of lateral g-force in the corners (if you don’t believe me, look at the G-meter in the lower right corner) and generally feeling very comfortable to the extent that I felt like I was driving a big go-kart, and I was driving close to the real limit of the car’s adhesion.  But once the car was stretching its legs down the back stretch, I had to really test my faith in the car’s grip as I went into the uphill, and I never really felt like I could drive the faster sections at 10/10ths because it just was too uncertain at my experience level.  I could sense that there was more time there, and I could feel myself holding back.  But it just takes a certain amount of comfort and experience to reach out and grab those extra seconds that I just didn’t have yet.  Now let me just say, the uphill is one of the most challenging parts of the track.  The first 2 days, the uphill was blocked off, and we were driving through a chicane instead (as you see in the video).  But since we were “big boys” now, they had us take the uphill at racing speed.  Basically, you enter the corner fairly early after some moderate braking and you have to accelerate through the apex at around 70mph and up the hill despite the fact that you can’t actually see where the car is going to end up. Add to this the close proximity of the guardrail (FGR) at the exit and you can see why I swallowed a bit harder each time I planted my foot on the gas pedal in this spot.  As the car takes a set, you feel like you are taking off in a small plane.  The car carries itself up the hill, and all you can see is the brow of the hill, and the blue sky. This is a good moment to contemplate religion. As you crest the hill, you feel momentarily weightless, and you can see all the travel of the front suspension go slack in front of you, just for an instant. But then the car comes back down and the suspension compresses, and you blast off down the next straight into West Bend. Judging the exact amount of braking for West Bend is tricky because it is a fast 4^th gear corner taken around 75mph, and the temptation is to slow down more than you really have to. The exit of West Bend tracks you out right towards a very solid and unmovable bridge embankment, and at this point, you enter a downhill section that is way steeper than it looks, which sets you up for the final bend that leads into the front straight.  Again, the temptation here is to brake earlier and/or harder than necessary because you carry a lot of speed down that hill, but you need a dab on the brakes to shift the car’s balance to its nose so that you can turn in definitively and apply power before the apex to maximize your exit speed.  Exit speed here is absolutely crucial because of the long straight following the corner.  Again though, I knew I was braking a little more than I should in the entry, but it was just a little too soon to be brave, as I was already entering the corner at over 90mph, dipping to around 85 at the apex.  I was reaching around 113mph by the time I braked for the first corner at the end of the long front straight.

It’s true what is often said about racing, that it makes you feel more alive. The wonderful aroma of the infield’s freshly cut grass wafted into my helmet even though I hadn’t smelled it while standing still.  It really was a natural high, and once I got situated, I think I felt more relaxed than tense.  As the second session came to an end, and I slowed to enter the pits for the last time, the realization that my 3 days at racing school were over started to wash over me. I had savored every moment as much as I could, but the realization that my euphoria was to be over for the foreseeable future was bumming me out we I finally came to a halt and killed the engine.  We had a nice diploma session in the classroom and talked about what we had learned, then everybody climbed into their cars and returned to being ordinary motorists.

The Automobiliac goes to Racing School!

I haven’t been able to post too much the past week due to travel, but I have a pretty darn good excuse! From May 3 through 5, I was fortunate enough to participate in the Skip Barber racing school’s 3 day Formula Car class held at Lime Rock Park, up near the Berkshires.   Attending a racing school has been a dream of mine since I was a kid.  Of course back then, I saw racing school as a first step towards the career as a professional driver that was my naïve aspiration. But now that I am a bit older, it is way too late for me to seriously contemplate beginning a pro racing career.  My main goal in going was just to see if I could actually do it! To see if I had the courage and the skill to actually handle a racing car properly.  Despite driving karts and my PC racing sims sporadically for a number of years, I went into Skip Barber with a knot of self doubt in my stomach.  After all, daydreaming about racing some day was one of my favorite things, and if I found out I had no talent and was a danger to myself and to others-- well, that would basically prove that my aspirations were all foolish self-delusion.  But I maintained some optimism, and tried to just be open minded about learning as much as I could and trying to improve from day to day.  As long as I wasn’t the slowest guy there, my ego would be ok.

For those of you who have been to Lime Rock, you’ll know that as far as natural beauty goes, there are few race tracks in the world as ideally situated.  To say the scenery up in Litchfield County is achingly beautiful is just the start, because uncoiling through these lush, green forests and slicing through rolling meadows are some fantastic driving roads.  Sparsely populated by traffic and police, these ribbons of undulating asphalt give driving pleasure that matches the visual splendor of the surrounding landscape.  And you don’t even need to go that fast to enjoy it: The pavement isn’t always the best, so keeping your speeds down will not only save your oil pan, but this gives you the mental space to really look around and drink in the nature that surrounds you, not to mention all the quaint barns and colonial era houses that dot the pastures.  Needless to say, the drive up to Lime Rock is always one to savor.

I stayed at the Inn at Iron Masters.  It’s a decently clean and tidy motor lodge in Lakeville, about 15 minutes from the track.  I chose to stay in town because I wanted to have something to do in the evenings once the day at the racetrack was over.  Sadly, at this time of year, the place is something of a ghost town. I was the only guest at the hotel (which is more creepy than you think), and when I went to dinner, there usually were very few people in the local restaurants.  But I was up there to get away from the city, and I tried to savor my solitude.  But enough about that! Let’s get to the part you want to hear about!

A note to those readers who were classmates and instructors: I may have some details of the chronology of events wrong here, but bear with me.

DAY ONE

I got up early so I could prepare all my various accoutrements for the day. I really didn’t know what to expect, so I had to get all my gear, snacks, changes of clothes, etc. together in a state of anxiousness.  I was sort of chomping at the bit to get to the track, but I was still trying to plan for any eventuality. The weather up in the Berkshires is very unpredictable, and brief spells of rain are common, so I brought a change in every item of clothing I was wearing. I had two different sets of driving gloves, and 2 different pairs of shoes in case one proved uncomfortable in the car.  I had 3 bottles of water, my cameras, and a rain poncho. But I kept thinking I was leaving something behind. In the end, I naturally discovered that I didn’t need about 90% of this crap, but it was comforting to know it was there!

The drive to the track from the hotel is about as great a motoring experience as you could ask for.  It’s a blessing that most racetracks are located way out in the countryside, because getting to them in the early morning hours can be one of life’s real pleasures.  I took Salmon Kill Road, which goes almost directly from Lakeville to the track with no intersections and no lights.  The early morning sun glinted across silvery pastures of dew-covered grass.  In the distance, ethereal plumes of mist rose off the warming foliage.  All was right with the world, and the Alfa purred along like it too knew this was going to be a great day.

I got to the track early, and commiserated with the first of my classmates to arrive and one of the instructors.  The first instructor I met was Bruce MacInnes.  A most genial and fun-loving fellow, Bruce has coached everyone from Michael and Marco Andretti to Tom Cruise.  He is also filled with hilarious and wise aphorisms about racing peppered with raunchy humor.  I knew we’d get along just fine!  Gradually people trickled in, and by around 9 we got underway.  At racing school, your time is basically divided into four activities: Classroom time, Track time, Instructor ride-along time, and Urination.  The combination of trying to stay hydrated and being nervous as hell meant that pretty much all of us visited the bathroom 5 or 8 times during the course of the day! But they plan this into the schedule so it works out just fine.

After some initial introductions and classroom time, we suited up and went outside to learn about the cars we would be driving.  Skip Barber offers racing classes in an SCCA-style Mazda MX-5 (Miata) as well as the open wheeled Formula cars that we would be driving.  After one taste of the Formula car, I can’t for the life of me figure out why anyone would pay just about the same money to drive the hopped up Miata for 3 days.  Though hardly beautiful, the Barber Formula cars are clean and straightforward in design.  They are of spaceframe construction, with fiberglass body panels to smooth airflow over the car.  The Formula cars do have some basic front and rear wings to provide downforce, but they are shod in high performance BF Goodrich street tires rather than racing slicks.  Grip is ample, though, with a potential for 1.2G cornering loads on the skidpad.  The 4 cylinder normally aspirated Mazda engine is mated to a 5 speed sequential Hewland gearbox at the back, providing about 130 horsepower.  This may not seem like a whole lot, but the car weighs a scant 1100 pounds giving it a nearly identical power to weight ratio to the top of the line Corvette ZR1, which is a 600hp fire-breathing Ferrari eater. The Barber Mazda Formula car will reach 60mph in about 4 seconds, and stop with a 1.2G braking power.  Needless to say, the idea of driving one filled me with both excitement and dread as I strapped myself in.

Getting into one of these cars is a lot more difficult than you’d think.  The cockpit is really quite confined, and you need to put both feet into the car simultaneously while supporting yourself with your arms as you slide yourself into the seat like a lady’s foot into a 6-inch Manolo Blahnik pump.  You keep expecting your butt to feel the seat bottom along the way, but you sink deeper and deeper into the cockpit until you have surprisingly limited forward vision, and the cockpit sides swallow you up.  At this point, I got a slightly panicky claustrophobic feeling and thought “What the hell am I doing in here?! How could I get out of this if I spin into a wall?” Putting on the seatbelts for the first time only amplified this sensation, because the quarters are so cramped that trying to manipulate the belts and get comfy requires a lot of twitching, jostling and squirming.  By the time I was belted in, I have to admit I was pretty tense.  And that was when it started to rain.

The first in-car exercise we were to do was to simply explore the cars’ handling and feel in a consequence-free environment, so we fired up the engines and followed the instructor car over to the autocross course which is a smaller circuit inside the main racetrack’s infield.  I have raced karts on this track numerous times, so I felt a modicum of comfort in the fact that I at least already knew the layout. But when we got there, I discovered that they were having us go in the opposite direction from what I was used to, and had placed cones around the course to create chicanes for us.  The pavement was really wet by now, and I was having a lot of trouble getting the car to turn in on entry without sliding off the damp asphalt, but once the car was pointed in the right direction, I would lay on the throttle and feel the back end step out as I applied some opposite lock to control it.  As I started to try to put on more power earlier coming out of the corners, I discovered that I could have some real fun with powerslides. What a blast! And this was all without getting out of second gear. The feeling of claustrophobia melted away and was replaced by a feeling of exuberance.  I spun 3 or 4 times, but I was starting to learn how far I could push before the tires would lose their adhesion.

While the second group was picking their way around the sopping wet autocross track, Group One (we were divided into 2 groups of 6) piled into a 16 passenger Ford Econoline van like the kind you hear of college swim teams being killed in due to highway rollovers.  This was to be our first venture out on the “real” track so we could learn the line around the corners as well as the braking points and apexes.  A question almost every single person has asked me about my racing school experience is “Were you scared?” And the answer is a resounding “Yes,” but I have to say that the scariest part was not driving the racing car so much as being a passenger in these “van-arounds.”  Here we are, buckled to the velour bench seats while our instructor drives us around the track, cornering at speeds I daresay none of us would have expected this van could do even in the dry, let alone the wet! I could tell he was getting a kick out of scaring us. But in the end, it was really informative and we learned the wet line at Lime Rock.

As a lifelong racing fan, I was familiar with the concept of the “wet line” on a race track. But I had always thought that the reason for the wet line was to avoid oil that had accumulated on the normal racing line, as well as to get to the outside of the track because the crown of the road would cause water to drain to and accumulate on the normal line.  But it turns out I was wrong. I think few people probably know that the rain line is an attempt to go to a more porous section of the asphalt for added grip.  Over time, the sliding and rolling friction of the racing cars actually “polishes” the surface of the asphalt in the area of the dry racing line.  When the track is dry, this provides good grip. But when it is wet, the track becomes incredibly slick there because the water can’t settle into any pores in the track surface.  By driving on the “unpolished” section of the circuit, you have a better chance of making it around the corner because the rain is not creating a film between the tire and the road.

Now it was time for us to learn how to shift up and down through the gears.  The Hewland racing transmission is designed so that upshifts can be accomplished without use of the clutch, but I could never quite get the hang of it without an unpleasant jerking as the shift occurred. Plus I felt more like a 1960’s grand prix driver using the clutch, so I figured who cares if I am taking that extra 1000/th of a second to shift? I am here to have fun!  The shifting exercise was to practice snicking up through the gears to 4th on the main straight, then braking at a green cone, and blipping the throttle while heel-and-toe downshifting back to second gear. This requires the driver to have strong brake pressure from the ball of his right foot, while rotating the edge of his sole out to quickly press the throttle and rev the motor.  The harder you brake, the easier it is for your foot to rotate over onto the gas pedal.  It is important to have a robust blip of the motor (which the instructors transliterated into the word “yungah!”) in order to avoid engine braking.  Or as the instructors said, “You don’t want to be known around the paddock for having a small blip.”  The shifting exercise was the first taste of speed, and I must say it was pretty exhilarating to hear the buzz of the 4 cylinder transform into a growl and then a scream as you approached the rev limiter.  As the speed built up, I could feel a wonderful vibration through my guts, and my helmet grew light on my shoulders from air rushing beneath it. After many years of trying to practice heel-toe downshifts in my road cars, it was surprisingly easy to do it in the racing car where the pedals were close together and the engine revved so freely. It was mainly a question of working on the timing, to make sure that all your body is working in complete unison.

After the obligatory bathroom break, we then began our first lead-follow sessions.  This was a very special moment for me. After all the years of dreaming about what it would be like to drive on a racetrack, this was my first time to really see what it was like. We were limited to 3200 rpm, which was supposed to keep us out of trouble. But this point, the track was also drying out much to our collective relief and we were able to run on the dry line. In groups of three, we followed instructors who drove Mazda 3 road cars. The idea was to match the exact braking, turn-in, and line of the instructor vehicle.  This was really helpful in teaching the right line through the corners. The real challenge would be how to nail that line each lap while pushing the limits of grip.  While Group 2 was in the racing cars, we in Group 1 rode along with the instructors in the Mazda 3’s. This was really great because we could watch closely how they handled the cars, and how their feet moved on the pedals.

After more classroom time, where we learned about the physics of weight transfer and how that can affect cornering ability, we were given more seat time in the car, this time with what they called a “Stop Box.” The idea here is that we would drive around the circuit without any instructor car, but feel out our own braking point and racing line, guided by cones placed by the instructors.  The instructors would then watch us from various vantage points and give us feedback through a walkie-talkie when we stopped at the “stop box” on the front straight. Once we had received our feedback, we could then proceed on our way again for another lap or two.  Our rev limit was upped to 3600rpm. While one group was out on the track in the race cars, the other 6 of us would take turns driving one of the Mazda 3’s with an instructor in the passenger seat. As one instructor R.D. put it, tongue firmly in cheek, “This is always a highlight for us.”

Perhaps I should say a few words here about the instructors, since they put their lives on the line for us and rode shotgun!  For all the fun and excitement of driving the car, the Skip Barber instructors, Bruce, Rob and R.D. were pretty much the best fun you could ask for.  Their enthusiasm for the sport was contagious, and you also got the feeling that when you did something right, it really made them happy.  When you didn’t do something right, they never scolded you. But rather made you question why you were not doing it right, and tried to help you work out for yourself what you could do to improve.  By the end of day 1, I was routinely breaking the “honor system” rev limit rule through the back section of the track because I was getting more and more comfortable in the car.  Bruce pulled me aside, and I thought I was in trouble. He said, “You’re carrying a lot of speed through west bend, and I think you’re doing well with it. I am not going to stifle you, but you need to be careful.  If things feel good, that’s when you need to worry.  So keep your cool and focus on precision.  Focus on the proper line and the speed will come.” So I tried to follow the zen master’s advice, and it really helped! When I got back into the racing car for the last run of the day, I tried to put the advice into practice and I felt much better.

Stay tuned for Days 2 and 3! 

FULL GALLERY HERE!

I haven’t been able to post too much the past week due to travel, but I have a pretty darn good excuse! From May 3 through 5, I was fortunate enough to participate in the Skip Barber racing school’s 3 day Formula Car class held at Lime Rock Park, up near the Berkshires.   Attending a racing school has been a dream of mine since I was a kid.  Of course back then, I saw racing school as a first step towards the career as a professional driver that was my naïve aspiration. But now that I am a bit older, it is way too late for me to seriously contemplate beginning a pro racing career.  My main goal in going was just to see if I could actually do it! To see if I had the courage and the skill to actually handle a racing car properly.  Despite driving karts and my PC racing sims sporadically for a number of years, I went into Skip Barber with a knot of self doubt in my stomach.  After all, daydreaming about racing some day was one of my favorite things, and if I found out I had no talent and was a danger to myself and to others-- well, that would basically prove that my aspirations were all foolish self-delusion.  But I maintained some optimism, and tried to just be open minded about learning as much as I could and trying to improve from day to day.  As long as I wasn’t the slowest guy there, my ego would be ok.