Oh, maybe as much as I've had when people like Herrick and Bollinger blow me
into the weeds by building cars with far more skill than I can bring to the
table and then drive them very well too, or when Adam Malley or Grady Wood
or Stan Whitney (and who's this Kannan guy!! :-) start bringing these
riceburners into our largely Brit/Italian class and clean house.
Would winning be MORE fun? Of course it would. But even when I was
uncompetitive and doing all I could to hold off last place, it was still
fun. Now that I've got a better package it is better yet, but still no real
threat to the top dogs of my class. Randy Herrick has gotten into my car
and, cold, gone a full second faster than I could get out of it on the same
day. There are some -- Herrick, Bollinger, Wood, Malley among them -- who
can just drive the wheels off things no matter what they're in. If I let the
fact they are better drivers than I keep me away, then certainly the fact
they also have better cars than I would have chased me off decades ago.
Instead I just try to make my ride a bit better, as I can afford to do so,
and try to keep learning how to drive it better. Five years ago I was 15
seconds down on my class champ. This year I was less than 4 seconds down.
That was worth it to me. Whining that someone else was too fast and going
home just was never an option.
What was the difference between 15 seconds and <4 seconds? Mostly cubic
dollars. I knew for years I was just outspent. And I know I could still
probably buy a second or two more time, but after that lack of talent will
become obvious. I'm about out of excuses now. But I'm not going to let the
presence of a few rice rockets in my class diminish my fun. (Besides, the
people driving them are fun too, and I come for that as much as anything.).
--Rocky
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark J. Andy <marka@telerama.com>
To: autox mailing list <autox@autox.team.net>
Date: Wednesday, November 01, 2000 2:33 PM
Subject: Re: Letter to SEB / ESP
>Howdy,
>
>On Wed, 1 Nov 2000, Rocky Entriken wrote:
>> That is a fairly reasonable statement. The main problem I find with it is
>> that for the great majority of us, this ain't business. It's something we
do
>> for the fun of it. And the fun is found as much in just driving your car
as
>> fast as its setup and your skill level will take it, and then being with
>> your buds and lying about how much faster you really were. If winning is
a
>> requirement for you to have fun, maybe a pastime where you have at least
a
>> 1-in-2 chance of winning, like checkers, is where you want to be.
>
>I can't speak for anyone else, but part of the fun factor for me is
>knowing that the _car_ isn't in the way of me doing well. If I knew that
>the absolute best I could hope for was mid-pack or something even if I ran
>the best run anyone's ever run, that would suck.
>
>Like you said, we all do this for fun. How much fun do you think ESP
>folks are having when they point out that the M3 is mis-classed and
>everyone tells them that its fine, they suck as drivers, and to quit
>whining?
>
>Mark
>
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