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30 June - Leaving Your Mark
Alex Zanardi, the King of the Donuts, leaves HIS mark at Surfer's Paradise.
Okay, having editorialized earlier this month on the backlash of Danica Partick's outstanding performance at the Indy 500 and given we have a four week gap in our schedule I'm going to take this opportunity to break my own rules again and do another Op-Ed piece. The subject this time: Victory Donuts.
Until the super-fast and ever flamboyant Alex Zanardi splashed onto the American Champ Car scheme in the mid-90s, on-track victory celebrations we limited to air punching, arm waving and the occasional weaving about. Alex changed all that with his legendary victory donuts. Since then every U.S. race win is celebrated with victory donuts seems. From IRL and NASCAR right down to shifter karts.
But the donuts aren't just about smoking up the stands and entertaining the fans. That is only a cover. To the driver, the main point of the exercise is to leave his (or her) mark for all following racers to encounter and be impressed by. To support this theory, just think to any time a pimply-faced gearhead spins his (or her) tires in the high school parking lot. The first thing that driver will do is look in the mirror to see just how black those marks are (admit it, you've done that every time). After all, what other purpose does a school parking lot burnout have other than to demonstrate the power of his (or her) ride - right there for all the other underpowered boys and girls to see. And what of the kids that weren't fortunate enough to be in the parking lot/cafeteria/stadium to observe this ultimate display of power and aggression? Well, they can feast their eyes later on those two impressive black strips of rubber. For days, weeks, maybe even months if conditions were right. Even if they never find out who the author of the rubber signature was, they will be (at least in the mind of the driver) thoroughly impressed and intimidated simply knowing that a vehicle and operator are out there. Somewhere. And for many drivers, leaving their mark in such a way has never been outgrown.
Not that they can really be blamed for such unsophisticated behavior, it is a primal instinct. A setting deep in the genetic code that has yet to be fully eradicated through generations of civility. A code that still makes us want to mark our territory, to leave a legacy of our potency and prowess, letting all challengers that may follow know that there is a creature out there that was able to leave that marker. That somewhere out there is the Top Dog that had its day - even if it was only one day - and left a part of him (or her) there. And the Top Dog reference goes far beyond simple symbology. After all, the donuts and the people who make them are, whether they want to admit it or not, doing the modern, mechanized version of what all dogs do in a new territory. That's right, the smoking donuts, billowing acrid odor of melting rubber, tortured tires and black rings on the pavement are just the racing equivalent of hoisting a canine leg.
So think about this next time you're watching victory donut. What you're seeing, really, is a very happy driver lifting his leg on the track.
Gee, I hope I didn't take any of the glamour out of it for you.
19 June - Can't Catch A Break
A crack (at left end of longest slot) cut testing short and kinda weirded us out..
Having made some good progress in a test session since our last race, our karts were finally on pace with the leaders. In fact, as Dana made up ground on her way to a second place in TaG Seniors Heat 2 she was clearly the fastest kart on the track. However, rare driving errors while each lady was contending for a top position kept them from getting the results they wanted. But as they say, that's racing.
That test session was a couple days before the race when Dana and I were able to get our work schedules in sync and get out to Circleville Raceway Park for a Friday afternoon and evening session. It was really the first chance we had all year to systematically try various set-ups with the new tires and the new engine. We learned a lot in a few hours. We were feeling pretty good and were doing one more session before calling it a day when we had the second stub axle failure in three days. Both times Dana could feel something going wrong with the kart through the steering wheel and came into the pits before the part failed completely at high speed. And it is the prospect of a high speed failure, the result of which would be a massive, sudden change of direction that unnerved us a bit. The first failure we dismissed as residual damage from the big crash Dana was involved in back at BeaveRun or just simply metal fatigue after a couple years of service or just a bad part. But when the brand new replacement part failed with only a couple hours of track time we got a little weirded out. Fortunately, we were able to track Rocky Johnson (who is quickly becoming the Conlin SpeedSports team welder) down on Saturday to not only repair the broken part but to reinforce the arm to prevent future fractures. Had we not been able to get the stub axle's arm reinforced, we would not have entered Sunday's TaG race at all. We were fortunate to have avoided at-speed failures twice. We were not going to chance a third time. More...
We (Tracy is far left) were on pace with the leaders but had nothing extra for them.
4 June - Still In A Slump
We still haven't got it all figured out yet and our slump continues. Although we were turning some of our fastest laps of the season in these new classes we weren't able to challenge for the lead in any of our races Saturday night. In fact, we were able to break into the top three only once when Dana finished there in the second TaG heat race. Low end performance seemed to put her at a disadvantage.
Tracy had a good run going in her second heat too holding down fourth with her sights set on third when a rear hub suddenly failed throwing her off the track in a wild spin. The fact that her kart was even able to take the green for the Final and circle around for points was a testament t the help we got from D.W. Route and Nick Bowman in putting the thing back together with the bits and pieces we had to work with. Thanks guys.
The lack of speed is something we will have to find the time to track down, going all the way back to the fundamentals and working our way back up. It could be one thing working against us or a combination of things. The question is how soon we'll be able to find the necessary time given all our personal schedules. But for those of you that must know, here are the grisly details of this race night.
Weight, weight, -don't tell me.
1 June - Professional-level Excuses
I try to keep my commentary on this site strictly to the happenings of our team. But in the couple days since Danica Patrick's stunning performance in the Indy 500 we have been absolutely dismayed by comments made by people we've respected. The day after the race winner Dan Wheldon, no doubt feeling a little cheated that he won and wasn't getting near the accolades as Danica said that she had a weight advantage, implying that her 100lbs gave her an unfair advantage over 157lb drivers like him. Robbie Gordon, although he followed up his comments with praise for Patrick, said that he felt the IRL rules should be changed to set the minimum weight to include the driver.
Team Penske even got on the weight wagon with Team President (and former Team Rahal manager) Tim Cindric reporting that his team even did the math and came up with a .8 m.p.h. advantage (no footnote as to what driver/weight they used for that calculation). .8 Mile Per Hour. Let's look beyond that impressive figure:
The .8mph would have its greatest advantage during qualifying. If you take away the .8mph from Danica's qualifying average she would have turned a 226.204, only good enough for 10th on the grid but still the highest qualifying rookie. And certainly still within striking distance of the lead.
But like Cindric said, it is .8 mile-per-hour. PER HOUR. PER HOUR. So what he is saying is after everyone has driven around the Indy 500 oval FOR AN HOUR, as hard and as fast as they possibly could in perfect, equal cars, with no traffic or lapped cars to deal with, Danica would be .8 miles ahead of everyone else. About 1/3 of a lap or about 15 seconds. I'm sorry folks - and I'll admit to being a little biased here - but 15 seconds after AN HOUR of racing your heart out doesn't seem like much to me. And after all, how often does that race go for a full hour without a yellow flag? And as soon as that yellow comes out at any point during that one hour, the lead goes back to .2 seconds.
It is disappointing to me that even at the professional level being "beat by a girl" still has people scrambling for excuses.
Comments are invited: jim@conlinss.com.
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