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GressTale8Aug08, The death of Fred’s car

I don’t have much experience at Road Atlanta.  And at my skill level I need to know a track really well before I start becoming reasonably quick on a track.  If I have a hundred days on a track I will know it well enough that I can be “mid-pack”.  A hundred days.

At Road Atlanta I have 2 days.  Which were last month.  And it is a complicated track.  And it’s a track with a lot of walls.  If you get in over your head at Road Atlanta, you will be punished.

In the weeks prior to this event I’d coordinated with an experienced racer who was graciously willing to spend some time with me Friday morning.  I was hoping that by getting the coaching I could jump start my grasp of the track from the “I’ve been here only 2 days” to maybe “I’ve been here a fair amount”.  What I found, however, was that it took me all morning just to get back to where I seemed to be last month.  I was pitiful.  I was embarrassed to be wasting the coach’s time.  It’s frustrating to suck.

In the late morning our paddock area (where race cars park) started to fill up.  So that more of us could fit in our assigned area, I decided to move my trailer and truck about 50’ away from the race car parking area.  So I moved the truck a bit, put down the trailer’s tongue wheel and then unhitched the trailer.  Then I moved the truck another 50’ away.

I happened to look in my rear view mirror and saw my trailer go rolling by left to right.

Uh oh.

It seems that in moving the trailer I had gone from flat asphalt to a little bit of a slope and hadn’t noticed.  To my great good fortune the trailer didn’t slam into any $200k exotics.  Instead it traveled about 100’ and slammed into a grass bank.  Some buddies jumped in to assist and we used our jacks under the front to lift the trailer’s tongue wheel out of a ditch.  Then with great care and one BMW truck I pulled the trailer out backwards with a chain.  The buddies closely monitored the jacks as they rolled along on their tiny little wheels under the trailer’s tongue.  The whole episode was highly embarrassing.

In the afternoon was the 3hr Enduro.  This would be the 4th such event for me and my co-driver, Clemson University Pshrink and fellow newby racer Fred Switzer.  Since it was his car’s turn, he would drive the first hour and then I’d jump in while we refueled.  I would come in after 2hrs and Fred would take the third hour.

But sadly it did not work out that way.  Well, “sadly” really doesn’t do it.  It was goddamned tragic.

Approx. at the end of Fred’s first hour behind the wheel, which due to the fierce concentration required is absolutely exhausting, he was flying into turn 1 at ~110mph.  Of the myriad of fascinating characteristics of this sport, it’s requirement for absolutely incredibly focused concentration has to be experienced to be believed.

As he was flying into turn 1’s braking zone his dashboard fuel light went on.  It only took a heartbeat to see the light, realize what it was, and decide that it was time to come in to the pits, give the car to Scott and get some gas.

A millisecond later he was back in the present.  Still at 110mph.  And now flying into turn 1 hot and off line.  The distraction had come as he was about to brake, downshift, and set up for the turn.  Braking as much as he could, under the circumstances only a short stab at the brakes, he flew into turn 1.  He ran wide of the turn’s apex (the inside edge of the turn) and clawed for traction as the car drifted towards the edge of the track as turn 1 sloped uphill.

The track heads uphill right in the middle of the turn and that provides significant additional traction.  If you have the balls to use it.  And Fred needed every bit of it.

When we go thru a turn, we are always sliding.  Thi is because the tires are at max traction at about 7% slip or so.  The trick is to manage it so that you don’t just visit 7% slip, but live there.  And if 5% slip is slow, 9% slip might be right off of the track.  Because if you are going as fast as you can with 7% slip will drift you out to the very edge of the track.  If you leave an inch of track width unused, you could have gone faster.  And in 2min you’ll get another chance to try it again a little faster.  If you’ve got the balls.

So back to the perils of Fred.  Too fast and off-line, Fred drifted, which is to say slid, to the outside edge of the track, and then on to the rumble strip that forms the very edge of the paved surface.  It looked like he might be able to hold it together.  The car had almost shed all of it’s lateral forces from the turn.  But then a wheel slipped off of the rumble strip into the dirt.  And that was it.  With the loss of lateral grip the car positively flew across the inadequate width of the strip of grass and then into the tire wall very hard.

I was in the pits, waiting in the sweltering sun, having just put on my thick fire resistant driving suit and helmet in preparation for Fred coming in.  I knew he’d be coming in this lap or the next.  Then the track went to full-course yellow.  Then the pace car went out to slow up traffic for an eventual restart.  We didn’t know what caused the full course yellow because the track is long and all we could see was the front straight-away.  After 5 minutes the cars had made a couple circuits of the course and we started asking each other “I didn’t see Fred, did you see Fred?” We started to worry.

“Oh no, don’t let it be Fred” I thought.  Fred and I had gotten pretty tight this past year.  We’ve probably exchanged more emails then most modern HS sweethearts.  If his car had gotten badly hurt it would be goddamn tragic.  Because of our harnesses and cages, it’s pretty rare for drivers to get hurt.  Frankly, me and my triathlon/cycling buddies got hurt a lot more often.  But our cars can get hurt pretty badly.

Then a flatbed wrecker came into the paddock area carrying a car.  Confirming our fears, it was Fred’s car.  The left front was crushed.  The rippled roofline meant that the frame was bent.  Fred’s car was history.

We packed up our gear and spent the rest of the afternoon working to get Fred’s car on to his trailer.  Fred was kind of in stunned disbelief mode.  Getting a dead and twisted car up on to a trailer is no picnic.

The car is now at a frame shop where smart folks are deciding whether or not it can be saved by straightening and welding.  His whole drivetrain took a hit so the motormounts and transmission mounts were all sheared.  All we can do is hope that the mounts sheared before motor or transmission were damaged internally.

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