Fellow FOTers,
A quick note.
Wednesday a week ago I drove ole' #196 (TR-4) from Atlanta to Daytona
(450m.)for the HSR Vintage race. The only en route mishap was a broken
tach cable.
Towed my trailer 'o race tires, replaced my everyday windshield with my
cute little Booklands windscreen and lined up with all the big boys. As
for representing the Marque, there were no other TR-3s or 4s so I
dominated! Yes, there were some Spitfires which did very well, but they
were pitted somewhere I couldn't find.
The Saturday Enduro race was a ninety-minute affair in which I took fourth
place behind a Lotus Cortina and 2 MGBs. Daytona is a very fast track with
high banks (30 degree+) and balls-to-the-wall straight-a-ways. My old
machine topped out at 113-mph lap after lap going into turn One. No, this
isn't as fast as most of you go-fast racers, but when you drive your ride
home that fast, you do give it some thought.
Paul Newman almost bought the farm going into turn 1 in the fast car races.
He was running third in some kind of Nissan rocket ship when first and
second place crashed. It was one of those horrible NASCAR type things with
tires and engines flying out of an end-over-end tumbling car flashing in
and out of a ball of fire.
The race is red-flagged.
I watched the crash from the hot pits; a couple of hundred yards away.
Like most of you, I've watched with no small fascination these sorts of
things in video replays, and find them kind of compelling. But this simply
isn't supposed to happen in OUR sport. We're still trying to figure out
the relationship of compression ratios to cam timing and fuel octane.
I went back to my pit just feeling terrible. Somehow I don't know if I
felt betrayed or if I realized that maybe I have been betraying myself.
Within 5 minutes the overly loud loudspeaker blares out that the drivers
have both been extracted from the cars and appear to be fine. They will
both have to go to the racetrack hospital to be checked out but everything
seems to be just fine.
Well, that was a week ago and I am still struck by the potential downside
risk of our sport.
That night last week I ran into Newman at the bar in our hotel and asked
him about the incident. He ordered a Budweiser (which the bar tender gave
him gratis) and answered by talking about how much more he liked driving
the Porsche 962. My sense is that Newman is some kind of very good racecar
driver who also does pretty well making a living in his sideline business.
On the way back to Atlanta I stopped in Warner Robbins for a couple of
hours to visit the Georgia Aviation Museum. For some of you aviation
types, just speculating the curvatures (and planar [it has both]) angles of
the SRT-71 is some kind of serious emotional delight.
I apologize. I thought I could make this just a brief report on Daytona,
but I got caught up a little bit in the meaning of what racing is all
about. At least sorta of what it is to me.
Richard Taylor
Atlanta
TR-4
|