Well, Andy has mentioned his side of the story at
Sears Point, but I'd been asked to make some notes
about what it's like to work in the pits, as well
as to recount some of the, er, more savory events
of the day. Here's my account...
A Cold Lap (and its, ahem, reverse side) at Sears Point
Saturday, February 17th was the third day of the SCCA
Driver's School held at Sears Point Raceway here in the
Bay Area. I had agreed to help a couple of fellow MG
enthusiasts, Andy Banta and Sam Sjogren, who were racing
an EP MGB-GT and an ITB MGB Tourer, respectively. Many of
you have probably read their report of the first weekend.
Well, this is what it's like to crew for a first-class
operation such as Team FizzBall.
As Sam would say, "It was a dark and stormy morning." I
got up at some ungodly hour of the morning, my family
getting ready to come with me (they were going on to the
Napa Valley to visit friends). The dawn in Sunnyvale was
beautiful, worth getting up to see: luminous pink clouds
lit from below by a brilliant sun.
By the time we got to San Mateo, the clouds had won and
the sun had apparently packed up and gone home. We crossed
the Golden Gate bridge, mercifully missing the previous
day's 62-mph winds, and pulled into the paddock at Sears
just about the time the clouds admitted they had been
warming up and were now ready to show us some *real* weather.
The SCCA was its usual self, which is to say they were trying
to prove that Hitler's SS were a pack of disorganized, lenient
goof-offs. At length I located the luxurious Team FizzBall
motorhome, got a pit voucher from Andy, and got my magic blue
paper that said I too could stand out in the rain at trackside
and wonder whether I'd get smacked by an errant Spec Racer before
I died of exposure or contracted Bell's Palsy.
None of the above happened, however, and in fact the day started
to get fun about the time I realized that motorhomes have roofs
and heaters. Sam's run group was out first; I trudged alongside
the red #6 MGB, helping Sam go through the checklist and settling
into the routine of preparing to race. We got the belts tight,
made sure the bonnet was secure, gave the Wink mirror's knob another
twist to tighten it, and as the minute-by-minute countdown neared
zero, the excitement mounted. So did the rain.
Sam managed to complete two 360s and one 180 in that session, but
we noticed the unmistakable smell of coolant as he pulled off
the course. It wasn't serious at that time; we figured it was
just the overflow tank (cleverly improvised out of a plastic
Castrol container) and Sam decided to go off and, as he put it,
"hose down the engine compartment."
This proved too much of a temptation for one of the other
crewmembers, Jeff who-would-probably-rather-I-didn't-reveal-his-
last-name. Jeff, it should be noted, likes to play with air-cooled
vehicles and was a little, shall we say, confused about the nature
of water-cooled engines -- or rather, about the chemical makeup
of their coolant. He offered to hose Sam's engine down personally,
but he choked under pressure and Sam drove off.
We got Andy's MGB-GT ready for his session, setting the tire
pressures and checking the various body panels (Andy, you might
remember, learned about hood pins when he discovered that his
MGB-GT had been equipped with the optional peril-sensitive
bonnet that flies up and obscures all visibility through the
windscreen when it senses danger). I watched Andy wriggle through
the roll cage, helped him get strapped into the car, and fastened
the window net, feeling like a squire attending to a knight as
he donned his armor before battle, or the assistant to a matador
preparing to enter the corrida de toros. Andy set off into the
heavy rain.
Two laps under yellow, then the green flag dropped and Andy set
off out of our field of vision. We watched... and watched... and
watched... until one of the crew said, "Has something happened to
Andy?"
"Didn't you hear?" someone else said. "Car #73 is stuck in the mud
outside of Turn 8 and needs a tow." A few minutes later, we got to
see what happens when you make an MGB-GT into a swamp buggy as Andy
pulled off the track and into the paddock. A quick inspection
proved that MGBs really are built like tanks -- no damage -- so we
pushed the GT over to the motorhome and cleaned it up.
Sam's session was next, and we were all ready, including Jeff who
had consumed a pot or two of coffee. "I'd like to have some support
in the hot pit," Sam said as he started wiping the rain from his
helmet and visor. "Take a bottle of coolant and some duct tape
and stand just inside the pit wall. If you see me come off the
track, jump over the wall and wave to me so I'll know where to
stop. If I've just been black-flagged, I'll drive past you to
the black-flag station and see what's wrong, but if I stop here
be ready to help."
Sam made some decent runs in the 3:02 range, which was pretty fair
for a novice driving in 2" of water on street A008s, which are the
world's second worst treaded tires when it rains. (The winner is
still the Pos-A-Traction Torque Twister, which has all the grip of
a waxed eel if you even so much as drive within, say, 600 feet of
open water.) A few minutes before the end of the session, Sam pulled
off into the pit lane, so I stood up on the wall (just in case the
problem that was taking him off the course was a brake system failure)
and hopped down to help when he came to a stop in front of me.
Once more, it was clear that the cooling system wasn't happy. The
needle on the temperature gauge was almost at the H, and clouds of
sickly-sweet steam from under the hood left no doubt that there was
a fairly serious leak somewhere. Sam released the bonnet and I lifted
it, and we could see where the problem was: the end of the upper
radiator hose, and we're in luck -- it's just loose. A quick poll
of nearby workers located a screwdriver ("Hey, if you can't fix it
with coolant and duct tape, we'll have to tow it home anyway") located
a screwdriver, and just as we got to twisting the loose hose clamp,
an event steward politely informed us that the session had been
red-flagged and we weren't supposed to work during a red flag.
"You aren't in any trouble since this is a school, but that's how the
rule goes." He let us finish tightening the hose clamps, we filled
the radiator with some of the coolant, and Sam pulled off course.
"I'm going to hose the motor down again," Sam said as he got out of
the car. This time, Jeff was ready -- and so was Larry's camera.
To the horror, chagrin, embarrassment and amusement of the south
end of the paddock, Jeff won the Dick Trickle award for the weekend
and proceeded to douse Sam's engine compartment with a golden stream
that turned into acrid clouds as it touched the hot engine block.
"You son-of-a-bitch!" Sam bellowed when he tried to start the car.
"You peed in my distributor! Take that cap off and *clean it*!"
Jeff obliged, the car started, and Sam went off to give it a more
thorough cleaning than before, ultimately including a session in
front of the heat gun to get rid of any moisture.
"Well," Andy suggested, "this gives new meaning to the phrase, `Be
the first on your block...'"
Compared to that, the rest of the day was almost boring. Our trackside
cooling-system repair held for the rest of the session, and Sam
managed to pull some fairly clean laps in spite of hail that almost
completely covered the track surface -- in the paddock, there was more
white than black on the ground. Andy managed to find the limit in a
couple of new turns, ending up the day having spun in every turn except
1, 9 and 11. But that's what school is for, getting the feel of the
course (and of its teeth) when there's nothing at stake but a little pride
-- no points, no position, no sponsor embarrassment.
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