Well, an eventful day. In both good and bad ways. The alarm went off at 6am and it was rude. Especially for Calvin as he'd been up until about 10:30 playing video games with Curtis. We grabbed a quick bagel and some coffee (well, I got coffee) and headed to Infineon. In the pitch black. And no front defroster. Oh well, such is life...
We rolled in and found some fellow Pelicans. Then I went off to my driver's meeting. It turns out that this combined red/orange race group would be interesting. Mike Mills and I were the only R7 cars there...and there were no slower cars. We would be the backmarkers, and have blazing fast red group cars on track at the same time. At the end of the meeting, the race chairman said, "ok, Todd has a silver car and Mike has a brown one...watch out for them being slow."
And so we headed out for the morning practice session. We were essentially guests for this event, having our one combined race group while NASA had a few groups as did PRC. The track was cold and slippery, and I struggled to remember the lines (I had driven this track only one weekend two years ago). I finally started to remember bits and pieces...especially the big wall in turn 10 and the tire wall in turn 11 that collected Jack two years ago. Hmm. Well, slowly edging up in speed but it was disconcerting because I spent the whole time looking in my mirrors. Objects are approaching faster than you think.
I did hold Mike at bay and pointed by car after car. Man, those cup cars are fast. Finally we get the checkered flag so I ease out of it and do my cool down lap. Coming out of turn 6 I see a standing yellow flag and I wonder what is up. I ease out a little more and come over the blind rise out of the esses and am stunned by what I see. A yellow 911 race car, or at least half of it, stuff into the back of a red rescue truck. I quickly move right (it was right on the racing line) and went past. I didn't see the driver of the car, but it didn't look good. Instead, it looked horrific. Bent steel and the two rescue guys trying to figure out what to do. I finished the cool down lap and headed into the paddock. WTF? Why was the emergency vehicle on track? And why wasn't there a waving yellow and a white flag (waving yellow indicates something is up immediately ahead and white means there is a rescue vehicle on track).
I park and we can see the section of track. There are a couple of ambulances now with more rescue vehicles. So we wait and talk amonsgst ourselves trying to figure it out. Then I hear a helicopter...uh oh. My initial fear was right, as it was medevac coming to land at the track. The ambulances head to the heliport and the tow truck drags in what is left of the car. I have some pics taken from high in the stands as they weren't letting anyone near the car. They cut off the roof and roll cage to get Andrew out. There was almost nothing left of the front of the car.
So it turns out that there was a piece of debris on the track, and the truck went out to remove it. While the track was still hot (albeit under checkered). Later in a driver's meeting another group blamed the driver for going too fast. But there is no "speed limit" on a checkered flag, and the flag screwed screwed up. First, they could have waited 45 seconds for the track to clear. Second, they should not have parked the truck right on the racing line (they did). Third, there should have been a waving yellow right before, and white flags at EVERY flag station to tell drivers there was an emergency vehicle on track.
Scary stuff. I feared it was a fatal crash. Luckily the word around the paddock late in the day was that he didn't remember what happened, had a very broken nose and possibly other bones, but was conscious and ok. Amazing. The roll cage did its job. Funny that I just had mine installed last week. It turns out he wasn't wearing a head and neck restraint device though...bad choice.
That put a bit of a pallor on the rest of the day. But we came to race, so race we did. First was qualifying and I'm proud to report that I was 35th out of 36 cars. But that is how it should have been based on who showed up. Mike was 36th. When race time came, the grid was a mess, I was at the back and just floored it coming out of 11 because they'd already gone green. And I settled in to try and keep Mike in my rear mirror (as opposed to in front of me) while not getting in anyone's way too bad. Managed to do just that, although it is challenging to try and drive hard when you're worried about people closing behind you. On the last lap I let a train go by me on the front straight and lost a ton of momentum heading up the hill. And suddenly, after gapping Mike most of the race, he was on my tail. Damn. Now to try and hold him off. He stuck with me and coming around 6 I still was in front but he was charging. Then I saw a yellow. Then I saw a truck on track. Geez, deja vu? MaryAnne had gone off into the tire wall, and for some reason they felt like they had to send a truck out. But that took the steam out of Mike and I got some space (he can't pass under yellow anyway) and finished out the last few turns to win my class.
Then to impound, and back to the paddock for a few yucks. One of my Pelican friends had a woman friend who showed up and turned out she was a craigslist date...he put an ad saying, "come drive in a race car" and this woman showed up. Either crazy and cool. Not sure which.
A trackside bbq after that, then back to Petaluma by 7:30pm. Calvin had left earlier with Don's wife so he could hang at the house instead of the track. Worked for him. And so bed will come soon, then we'll get up and do it again. This time packing all our clothes and whatnot as we'll head back to LA right from the track. Unfortunately I can't find my house key, so I'm hoping I still have one stashed in my garage. Otherwise I'll be breaking a window or something at 11pm when we get back into town. Might be somewhere in the car, but it isn't where I thought I put it. *sigh*
