If we did this today, we’d be in jail.
Sorry for the downtime, but I’ve been having computer problems which have been preventing easy access to the internet. But since I believe the readership here is approximately None, I figure I wouldn’t be missed.
Rather than talk ad-nauseum about the new chassis (short version: I may as well wait until an official decision is made), I thought I’d review another movie. This one has Gable in it, and Barbara Stanwick as the “lady.”
As far as the plot is concerned, it’s a bit of a museum piece. Stanwick is a hard-nosed newspaper columnist, a sometime investigative reporter/sometime social critic. At the time she was probably based on Dorothy Kilgallen, but the modern version would be if Oprah also appeared on 60 Minutes. Stanwick decides to do a human interest piece on Clark Gable, a hard-nosed auto-racer. Since both of them are hard headed, and because Gable tends to talk with his right foot and kiss with his lips, the two of them don’t co-exist very well, but they’re similar animals in their own way and there’s an attraction and a mounting respect. Especially after Gable grabs her and gives her a good one. That always straightens ‘em out.
So the plot is somewhat cockamamie, which is par for the course in most race movies, but the racing is actually decent. There are some bad back-projection scenes, but largely the photography is pretty good, and some of the bits (like Gable trying to beat the rain while qualifying at Indy) are very well done.
But it’s a bit irritating to watch bits of it. Listen to the announcer on the second clip as he describes the pace lap. The cars are faster and more powerful, the drivers more skillful. How many years have gone by since we’ve been able to say that?
All in all, it’s so-so. I’d rank it as a Must See list just for racing-movie cultural literacy, but it still leaves a lot to be desired.
The new Delta Wing concept car has been unveiled. Link takes you to the website.
Okay—I see how it looks. I saw the simulation and I read what passes for technical specs.
This is what I think needs to be answered:
1. How fast can it go? If you were qualifying it at Indianapolis, what would its best lap speed be?
2. Can you pass another one of these things?
If it’s slower than what we already have, then nobody will want to see it. And if it’s not faster, then what is the point? It just comes down to being different for no other sake than being different.
If you can’t pass in it, then the races become even more of a parade than they already are. People are already loudly complaining about races being decided solely on pit stops. The Europeans seem to like it in F1, but I think it’s like watching paint dry.
I get no sense of either of those things from the videos or the tech specs.
All in all, I’m disappointed. I’m hoping there will be good news because I would like to see something that breathes life back into Indycar. But I didn’t get a decisive feeling that this is it.
An interesting story ran on National Public Radio the other day: America’s Cup Sails Into (and Over) Uncharted Seas. You can read it, but I think listening to it is a little more compelling.
The America’s Cup Yacht Race is undergoing a big technological transformation and it’s very controversial, and the result is unknown as to how this will play with fans. The traditionalists loathe it, because technology is replacing the human element and moving it farther away from anything anyone recognizes as yachting. On the other hand, they’re pushing the frontiers of technology and what can be accomplished; they’re doing something new and different, rather than the same old thing over and over again.
I’m not interested in yachting, but I look at this and I think the parallels are inescapable. The new “delta wing” prototype will be unveiled this week and supposedly it’s revolutionary, not evolutionary. If it is adopted, I expect another outcry from the traditionalists who are already complaining that Indycar is straying from its roots—the lack of competitive American drivers, the preponderance of street and road courses, and the sole-source chassis/engine/tire combination. Will the delta wing chassis just move us even farther away from anything we recognize as “auto” racing? Used to be you could reasonably dream of putting on your coveralls, firing up the lathe and building a race car that could maybe compete in the 500. Now you need an advanced engineering degree from M.I.T.
I don’t know what will happen with either the Delta Wing or the America’s Cup. But I’m pleased to know that my niche sport isn’t standing at the crossroads, peering at an uncertain future, all by itself.
I got an email the other day from Indycar with a short survey. I’m opinionated and I enjoy surveys if I think something good will come of it.
It was short. Here are the questions.
1. Of the following two events, which one would you prefer to attend, via the 2010 Indy Racing League fan bus trip (departing from Indianapolis, Indiana)?
* Peak Indy 300 – Chicagoland Speedway (Joliet, IL ) August 28, 2010
* Kentucky Indy 300 – Kentucky Speedway (Sparta, KY) September 4, 20102. Which type of track is your favorite to attend a IZOD IndyCar Series event?
* Oval
* Road Course
* Street Course3. How many IZOD IndyCar Series events do you plan on attending in 2010?
* 1 – 2
* 3 – 4
* 5+
* None
This is the kind of survey which makes me shake my head. The problem is that they almost never give me the choices I think are accurate, and I was always wonder how people will interpet my answers based on my choices.
It’s like when The News reports “in a recent survey, 55% of Americans said they do not like the direction the country is headed.” What does that mean? Most people I know are unsatisfied on some level or another—it depends on what the particular issue is. Are we talking about the direction of the economy, Federal spending, the War on Terrorism, the War on Drugs, the War on Poverty, revisiting the moon, the Boeing/Airbus Air Force tanker debacle? Something else? Most people I know are a mix of thumbs up and thumbs down on each. To put everything together in a bucket with eggs on top doesn’t get you anything but a huge mess.
So let’s take Question #1. Which of these two events would you rather go to via a bus trip departing Indianapolis? Chicagoland or Kentucky? Well, I live in LA so if I wanted to go to either event, I figure I’d fly there directly. I don’t see myself flying in to Indy just to ride on a bus the rest of the way. Is my answer to this question useful to anyone? No.
Question #2. What’s your favorite type of course? Right now in Indycar history, that’s like asking your opinion on abortion. In my case, the answer varies. If I’m watching on TV, I want a mix of things because I get bored watching the same thing every time. I enjoy a mix of course types. It means a good team has to be good at several things, and requires more talent from the drivers to succeed at both ovals and twistys. Done well, they each have their particular advantages and drawbacks.
In person, I want to try a small oval. The only live event I’ve attended is the Long Beach Grand Prix, and it was a less than happy experience. From my spot at the top of the stands, I still only saw the very top of the cars as they blurred by, and a small bit of pit lane. I had to follow the entire race from the track announcer. On the last few laps everyone stood up, so my view of end of the race was of the back of people’s heads. I ended up watching it on TV off VHS later to actually see what happened. For the amount of money I spent, I was not pleased.
I figure on a small oval I have a chance of actually seeing something. Which one? I’m not sure. There are two I was particularly interested in: Fontana, which is close enough to drive to, and New Hampshire, which is small and I heard was a good at-track experience. Neither are on the schedule this year.
Question #3: How many events do I intend to go to? Again, that depends on how you spin it. Right now I’m planning on going to the LB GP again, but this time on either Friday or Saturday before. I’ll walk the paddock and the show area and wherever else I can go, but I’ll watch the actual race on TV. It’ll be a lot better experience all the way around.
So I’ve bitched about the questionaire—how about what would I suggest instead? Here’s the questionaire I would rather see:
1. If you were interested in going on the fan bus to an Indycar event (departing Indianapolis), which would it be? A) Chicagoland, B) Kentucky, C) I’m not interested in either
2. How many Indycar events have you attented before?
3. Which would be your favorite kind of Indycar event to attend?
A) Oval
B) Road course
C) Temporary street/airport course
D) None – I prefer to watch on TV or listen on radio
4. Please assign a score of 1-5 for your favorite aspects of attending a live event? (1 = not interesting, 5 = very interesting)
A) Watching the race live
B) Watching car prep in the paddock
C) Seeing/meeting drivers / autograph sessions
D) Visiting the other areas where they sell merchandise, give demonstrations, etc.
5. Please assign a score of 1-5 for your least-favorite aspects of attending a live event? (1 = unimportant, 5 = very important)
A) Price of tickets
B) Non-ticket costs (parking fee, VIP passes, concessions)
C) Availability of preferred seating
D) Lack of special access (paddock and pit passes)
E) Getting in/out of the area (e.g. traffic, parking)
F) Venue accomodations (e.g. restroom facilities, concessions, traffic control)
6. If you could attend any live Indycar event in the USA (other than the Indy500), which would it be? [List of events]
7. If you could attend any three live Indycar events in the USA (other than the Indy500), which would they be? [List of events]
I think that’s a good start. I think if I were looking over the results of that survey, I’d get a lot more out of it.
With a few exceptions, I really do try not to kick people when they’re down. I was not a supporter of Tony George, but I didn’t do a dance when he left the IMS, and I won’t do it now that’s left the boards. I did not agree with some of his decisions or his “vision.” I don’t doubt his love of the sport, but I can disagree with many of the things that he did.
What surprises me is the amount of hang-wringing that I’ve seen on the blogs. For someone who was often reviled for his leadership of the breakaway IRL and the subsequent maiming of American Open-Wheel Racing, it’s amazing how many people are now saying that the sky is falling. What will happen now?
I don’t know what’s going to happen. I have no crystal ball. But I know where we’ve been and where I think we’re headed, and I’m ready for a change of course.
So I don’t know what the future will bring—and I’m fine with that. In fact I’m pleased by it.
Now I don’t really know what to do to solve all the problems. I’ve throw out some ideas in previous posts, and even though I illustrated them absurdly, I think they make sense at the core. But a lot of the big things—I don’t know.
I do think a lot of the problem is systemic: it comes from the way they’ve built the business and now they’re locked into something difficult to maintain. The sport used to be similar to professional golf: young racers would hone their skills in small races, build up, get a permit from the sanctioning body (be it AAA, USAC, what-have-you), and then travel and enter whichever events they could qualify for. It was something like the PGA’s Q-school and the Tour.
But somewhere along the line, they wanted a League instead, a travelling show with more-or-less the same people every time. But unlike Major League Baseball, the NFL, the NBA, or even hockey, they don’t have a permanent set of venues as well as teams. I.e. the MLB doesn’t have to negotiate with the city of Chicago to have a Yankees/White Sox series every year. As far as I know, the only venue locked into the IRL is Indianapolis, and that’s because they own it.
In those leagues the teams and the venues are nearly always owned by the same entities, and there’s a pooling of money and resources.
But Indycar is more like the PGA tour. Except that pro golfers don’t have to pay a hellish amount of money to develop and fine-tune their equipment. Tiger Woods doesn’t show up on the golf course with a million-dollar bag of clubs. Ernie Ells doesn’t run the risk of hitting a wall and having all of his clubs instantly turned into scrap iron.
The result is that Indycar teams are beholden either to corporate sponsorship, or angels (individuals who will underwrite the costs because it’s a hobby), or both. And because auto racing is expensive, that’s a tough task. If you’re a sponsor, you tend to look at NASCAR because the cars are rolling billboards and they gather larger crowds to see your message. If you’re an angel, you have to be wealthy enough to love Indycar more than yachting, or thoroughbred racing, or any of the multitude of other sports and activities which could use a healthy infusion of cash.
[I've never understood why David Letterman's WorldWide Pants, or Jay Leno don't actively sponsor a car. I might be more inclined to watch The Late Show or The Tonight Show if I saw it painted on a car every Sunday.]
I’ve been wondering what would happen if they blew up the League as it is, and simply went with a more open spec. I.e. for the engine, specify the displacement, cylinders, and boost. Make certain specs on the chassis, particularly to require safety equipment. But that’s it. Let people buy off the shelf where they can, or make deals with various suppliers. That might open things up.
Drivers’ credentials would go similar to the PGA’s Q-school. Rookies have to prove they can handle the equipment to become eligable. If you earn a set number of points during the season, you get a pass on Q-school the next year.
I don’t know if it would work or not, but I’m guessing it would open the door back up to some of the small teams like Rahal and Cheever—people who got knocked out the last few years. More teams adds pressure to perform, and maybe you don’t see the same 16-20 people every race. Maybe someone comes up with a combination of driver and equipment that can run with the Bigs.
The idea of Balkanizing the suppliers might actually send Indycar back to its roots in small garages and speed-shops, where designers were able to put together a car without having three ex-NASA scientists to simulate the car on a supercomputer, with all the expense that requires. I realize that we can’t, and don’t want, to go back to the 1950s. But I hate the idea that Andy Granatelli can’t show up with a turbine car anymore.
Part of racing is about dreaming and seeing what’s new, and trying to cook up something different and beat the Big Boys at their own game. I think you used to see that in the earlier days of racing. You don’t anymore. Now it seems to be about shaving tenths off pit stops (or more often, not ripping the fuel hose off when exiting), and about setting up the spec chassis to handle well, and pit windows for fuel mileage. That’s interesting, but it’s not the stuff of which dreams are made. Did anyone ever dream of winning a prize fight on points? Did anyone ever fantasize of running out the clock to win the Super Bowl? Did anyone ever dream of the final play of Game 7 of the World Series being a fly-out to right?
And they wonder why it’s so difficult to get new fans.
Sooner or later, something’s going to give. We’re going to head in our current course and smash on the rocks. Or we’re going to change course and maybe smash on the rocks, or maybe not. But my guess is that with the departure of TG, we’re going to change course some way or another. We may still sink, but I think we’ve gone from certain sinkage to uncertainty, and that’s an uncertainty I’ll happily embrace.
This was brought up originally on the radio show/podcast Trackside with Cavin & Kevin, and George over at Oil Pressure blog ran with it. I wrote a short comment there, but I’m going to expand on it here. Besides, it’s the middle of the off season and I don’t want to run another movie review.
The original premise is that we’re going back to the CART model just before the split (too many foreign drivers, too many non-ovals), and that’s bad. We need to get back to our roots.
I disagree. So I’ll break it into two sections: drivers and courses, and this will be my post on the track layouts.
I listened to the call on Trackside and here’s a pertinant quote regarding the tracks:
We [the fans] do not want to see running through streets, around stadiums, or Brazil or China–you’re going to lose more and more of us over time. . . . It’s the driver, it’s ovals. . . . If they [Indycar] think the business model of going to street courses in major metropolitan cities so they can have their cocktail party. . . and that these people are truly going to like it so much that they’re going to watch a parade in another city in another country on TV, they’re grossly mistaken.
The call starts about 37 minutes into the podcast, if you want to hear it all in context.
To me, the key word in that is parade, because I believe that’s what fans hate most about street and road courses. I agree on that level: I don’t like it when the only passes come during pit stops. My biggest beef with F1 is that whomever gets to Turn 1 first wins the race, and there is an element of that too in Indycar’s road courses.
But I think that can be addressed. One is that the courses need to be designed with more passing zones so that faster cars can get through traffic; the other goes back to my argument in the IROC post that cars should be less reliable—the equipment ought to be running closer to the edge. I.e. the leader of the race may have his engine let go, or his tires don’t last as long. To me, unpredicatability is the key aspect which makes racing interesting. I love the Indy 500 because I know the pole sitter usually doesn’t win. I know drivers typically do not dominate the entire race. I do not get that feeling with other races, ovals or otherwise.
On a higher level: I’m easily bored and I don’t want to watch oval racing every time. I like the mix of ovals and road courses. I truly enjoyed the circuits in the late 80s/early 90s when it seemed like it was a speedway one week, then a road course, then a tri-oval, then a temporary street course, then a short oval. They require different setups, they require the drivers to have a more varied driving skill set. It’s more than just Drive Fast, Turn Left.
To me, the diversity of the schedule is what makes Indycar far better than both F1, which is entirely road circuits, and NASCAR, which is mostly oval.
And I swear, nothing puts me to sleep faster than tri-oval racing. I’ve seen parades on ovals as well. The only difference is that it’s easier to lap traffic.
As for the people who complain about the lack of ovals: I’m looking at the 2010 schedule and it’s 9 road courses and 8 ovals. So ovals make up 47% of the schedule. Why is half the schedule not enough?
I don’t hate ovals: I’d like to see New Hamsphire back on the schedule, too. But I know people who can eat a steak and potato every night and never get tired of it. I can’t.
This was brought up originally on the radio show/podcast Trackside with Cavin & Kevin, and George over at Oil Pressure blog ran with it. I wrote a short comment there, but I’m going to expand on it here. Besides, it’s the middle of the off season and I don’t want to run another movie review.
The original premise is that we’re going back to the CART model just before the split (too many foreign drivers, too many non-ovals), and that’s bad. We need to get back to our roots.
I disagree. So I’ll break it into two sections: drivers and courses, and this will be my post on driver nationalities.
Maybe I’m alone in this, but I’m not very concerned with the nationality of the driver. But let’s start by looking at the Americans, based on last year’s active roster:
Marco Andretti: I am not a fan. I have no idea what he’s like in real life, but almost every time I see him interviewed, I grind my teeth. He seems to have “it’s my name on the door” syndrome. He’s got all the cockiness of the family pedigree, but none of Mario’s tact or charm, and he doesn’t yet have Michael’s win record to make his critics eat it. I keep thinking he’ll grow up, but one of the most recent quotes I heard from him was when he tangled with a rookie and he said, “the kid doesn’t get it, and he never will.” My guess is that Marco has been on the receiving end of that line more than once.
Danica Patrick: seems to be turning into Danica(TM). She’s not a driver, she’s a marketing corporation who drives on the side. I realize that driving is her role and marketing is a way of making it possible, but I really think she’s turning into Martha Stewart: cold, aloof, a CEO who plays a role on tv. I don’t think Danica’s long contract-negotiation with Andretti, nor the is she going to NASCAR debacle, has done her any good. Meanwhile she only has 1 win to her in a five-year career. I don’t care how many times she poses for Maxim, looking good in a swimsuit doesn’t make me admire her as a driver.
Graham Rahal, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Townsend Bell and Richard Antonucci: they look promising but it’s early yet.
Ed Carpenter: I’m one of those people who’s still pissed off at Tony George for creating The Split in the first place, so I can’t root for any Vision Team member. Nothing personal against Ed. I’ll reconsider him if he signs elsewhere.
Sarah Fisher: I long ago wrote her off as a perennial back-marker, but I do admire her re-invention after her NASCAR disappointments, coming back as a team owner and repositioning herself as the anti-Danica. Again, I’ve never met any of these people in real life, but she’s coming off in the press as warm, approachable, optimistic and being a leader on the track, whereas Danica(TM) is shooting a commercial where she fluffs out her long hair. But the sad fact is that in any given race, I expect Danica to finish above Tenth and Sarah below.
Foyt IV and Scott Sharp: I think they really ought to be looking at other worlds to conquer.
So how about the guys who came here to race?
Franchitti, Castroneves, Briscoe and Kanaan: they’re all guys I can get easily get behind. They’ve proven they’re capable of competing, and they all seem to race hard but clean. Except for an occasional incident, I almost never hear them whine to Lindy Thaxton on-air about whatever happened. If they have problems, they seem to deal with them off-camera. I know that’s boring and yes, I loved it when Danica smacked that guy in pit lane, but I prefer class over sass; and that seems to show both on and off the track.
And then the up ‘n comers: Will Power (Oz), Vitor Meira (Brazil), Oriol Servia (Spain), Justin Wilson (England), these guys seem like the ones to watch, and again, I’ve yet to see the bad-boy attitude that I get from some of the Americans.
Ultimately, what I’m trying to get to is this: I’m not interested in the nationality of the driver. I don’t wrap my national pride in the birthplace of an Indycar driver. I rather admire the fact that they chose to come here and compete, and a lot of them seem to want to be here, rather than looking at it as a stepping stone to F1. Whereas American drivers often leave to pursue NASCAR.
And from what I’ve seen from a lot of American drivers in NASCAR, I keep rooting for Juan Montoya…
I often read the Q&A articles by Indycar’s two premier journalists, Robin Miller (Mailbag) and Curt Cavin (Ask the Expert: IRL). There are three commonly recurring topics, particularly in the off season:
1. Will Veteran Driver [e.g. Paul Tracy] have a ride this year?
2. Will Promising-up-n-Coming Driver [e.g. Leilani Munter] have a ride this year?
3. Will Backmarker [e.g. Milka Duno] have a ride this year?
Now balance this against the fact that the car count for a normal Indycar race is around 20 (only the 500 is significantly larger). The result is that you end up with a lot more available drivers than there are seats, and that makes thing interesting—or frustrating. Or both.
It’s particularly frustrating at the bottom for the people who trying to break in, since there just isn’t much turn-over, because for every Sam Hornish who leaves for good (apparently), Dario Franchitti and Sarah Fisher come back. Dario was good enough to land a plum spot; Sarah carved out her own (albiet part time).
That doesn’t leave a lot of room for the likes of Ana Beatriz, John Edwards, Simona DeSivlestra and numerous others who deserve a shot. And it’s cold comfort to Bruno Junquera, who showed last May that he hasn’t forgotten how to go fast. Or even Paul Tracy: because even though I’m not a fan, even I can’t blame him for turning the front wing backwards during a pit stop.
One of the problems, besides car count, is that people buy rides. Racing has always been a rich man (or woman)’s sport, so unless you have a multi-millionaire owner who likes to race as a hobby, you have to get corporate sponsorships. That means developing a personal relationship with Suits (often empty suits), and that’s not often part of the personality of someone who spends his life mastering how to drive on the razor’s edge.
Milka Duno is the current poster-girl for buying a ride; after two full seasons, it’s obvious she’s in over her head and really ought to be looking at another series where she might be more competitive. I hear Robert Doorknobs as being a case where he has a ride because he brings sponsorship dollars. And Danica is good driver, but a very large component of her appeal is her off-track marketing power.
That’s nothing new; buying rides is as old as racing. The icon of it is the infamous Salt Walther, but you can go back to any era and find someone who’s in the race only because he could afford it.
I don’t think the economics are ever going to change, so how do you attack the problem from another angle?
Consider this: did anyone else groan when they heard that John Andretti would be back in a car last year? I have nothing against him—he seems like a good guy. But he was so-so in CART, he was lackluster in NASCAR, and now he’s back in Indycar. Why? That’s exactly the kind of seat you could give to a deserving Indy Lights or Atlantics star.
I think it would be interesting to yank the licenses of drivers who don’t compile a given number of points in a certain number of races. Let’s say you’ve never finished in the top 10 in your last 10 starts: you’re license is revoked. Try out another series for a couple years; maybe Indycar just isn’t your forte.
If you do that, suddenly you have some openings; that could mean a return for Paul Tracy, or Bruno, or whatever woman who looks good in lingerie and is touted as the next Danica Patrick. And if they fail—a seat opens up for someone else.
What about sponsorships, you say? If Milka goes, she takes Citgo with her. Yes and no—I would think if Citgo really cares about Indycar, they can probably find someone acceptable to take her place. Besides, since Milka gets almost no air-time these days unless she tangles with someone, Citgo isn’t getting much bang for their buck anyway. Finding another driver wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, especially if the driver turns out to be good.
But you don’t find that out if don’t give new people a chance.
I love The Onion. Where many news-parodies do a half-assed job of it (e.g. Saturday Night Live), The Onion really tries to make it look real.
I don’t care if you like NASCAR, hate NASCAR, like auto racing, hate it, whatever—if you have a sense of humor, I think you’ll find this funny. I thought it was great.
When I was a kid, I used to watch ABC’s televised coverage of the Indy 500 at night (they ran it tape-delayed), and Jackie Stewart was the color man. I couldn’t abide him: I had no idea who he was; all I knew was that he had a high, grating voice and a foreign accent, and it drove me crazy.
I know better now. And I often wish that ABC and the IMS would release those telecasts on DVD or Hulu or something—anything—where I could see them again and appreciate what I was too young to appreciate back then.
I found this back by accident once, as I was poking through a library shelf to find something interesting to read. It’s arguably the best book on auto racing I’ve ever read.
The book is formatted as a (mostly) daily diary of the 1970 F1 season; Stewart discusses his off-track life only to the extent as it supports his career—the travelling, testing, promotions and personal appearances; most of the entries cluster around each race. Typically there’s an entry about practice and qualifying, and another about the race itself.
But this isn’t just a recap in the “started second, finished fourth” style. He and co-author Peter Manso blend in appropriate comments (often at length) about the event itself, past events, Stewart’s competitors, and other items of interest.
Here’s an excerpt from one of favorite parts of the book.
June 4, 1970
Spa: Along with the Nürburgring, one of the two most dangerous circuits in the world. Very fast, with lap speeds in excess of 150 mph, through the Ardennes Forest, so that if you go off you’re almost certain to hit a house or land in the trees. Frequently, without warning, it rains and the course is so long, almost nine miles around, that it can be wet on one side and perfectly dry on the other; you can find yourself driving in a downpour on dry tires at speeds as high as 190 mph. Last year we refused to run there because the organizers hadn’t put up enough Armco barriers or made the changes we’d requested—there were barbed-wire fences, drops, unprotected houses, and the most minimal kind of spectator protection, and we knew that if a car went off, it was going to be a disaster. Even the insurance companies wouldn’t accept it, so they were forced to call it off. They’ve made the improvements now, or at least most of them, and we’re obliged to go; we can’t insist they complete every inch of railing.Nevertheless, I don’t like it. I really don’t want to go. . . . I’ve decided if it rains I’m not going to drive. I’ve told Ken [Tyrrell, team owner] and he’s accepted it. He has to. My judgement’s as good as anybody’s and he knows this too.
The rain is horrendous. When I had my accident in ‘66, eight or nine drivers spun off on the same first lap because we never knew it was there, over on the far side of the circuit, a true downpour. I went off the road at approximately 150 mph and knocked down a couple of walls and part of a house and a few other things, and luckily got off with very light injuries. But when I was trapped in the car for some thirty-five minutes, the petrol tanks were ruptured and the monococque, being like a bathrub, filled with thrity-two gallons of fuel. Fortunately, the car stayed upright with me inside it, but they couldn’t get the electrics switched off, as the dashboard had been destroyed and was being in around me. The pumps were going, the power was still on, and the fire risk was enormous. The fumes were getting me unconsious, and Graham [Hill] and Bob Bondurant, the American driver, both of whom had bad accidents at the same corner, were working to get me out. They had to remove the steering wheel, borrow tools from a spectator’s car since there were no marshals nearby, and I had broken my collarbone, dislocated a shoulder, cracked some ribs, and had a bit of a concussion.
My main concern, though, was that gasoline, the possibility of it lighting up. I was getting gasoline burns, and eventually most of my skin came off, and even though it really wasn’t too painful, I was very keen to get out. A helicopter was up above me, and I can remember speaking quite clearly to Graham, asking him to get me the hell out of there and into the chopper, which I thought was for me. But it wasn’t. It was filming for the movie Grand Prix, just hovering overhead with the cameras gridning. They couldn’t find an ambulance, and I had to like there in a barn another ten or fifteen minutes until one came, and all the while I was telling Graham to get me by chopper to hospital. I kept telling him I had to be flown back to London, that I didn’t want to be treated in Belgium. I thought this was very important.
So I want Spa stopped. I say this categorically. I don’t think the place is safe or right for modern racing. It’s the fastest road course we visit, true, but the fables that have built up around the place are absurd, absolute crap. The notion that it’s a maker of men is ridiculous. The Masta kink is one of the fastest and most dangerous sections there, but examined rationally, it’s simply another turn to be done right, nothing more, nothing less. You try to take it flat out at 170mph, bu the notion of limits applies to every turn, whether France or England or the States. I like to go around Spa so as to know that I’ve done it, sure. To go falt out down the Masta straight and arrive at the kink and have the guts not to lift off or brush the brake, or even give the car the slightest sensation of lift. But once you’ve done it, you realize that there’s not much to it, and every time after that, every time you’re two hundred yards before that kink, you’ve got a lot of thoughts going through your mind as to what an idiot you are. You know that you don’t need to do it that fast, that driving that way actually scrubs off speed and if you lift off a a bit you’ll go through quicker, or at least come out at the same speed, but the pressure of the situation is always such that you get tempted into taking it flat, and this is very, very dangerous. As professionals, we’ve got to weigh the consquences of a mistake—t ourselves and to spectators. Spa doesn’t allow for mistakes. It’s dangerous, and dangerous to the point of folly, and so it is risk not worth taking.
Stewart comes off as a particulary intellectual driver, one who purposely thinks out the turn-by-turn strategy, as opposed to just driving by the seat of his pants. Putting that into print gives the reader a special insight into the world of racing beyond the roar of the engine and the crowd.
What makes it special is that it’s so rare. Most driver autobiographies are or appear to be ghost-written by journalists with a strong eye on P.R. Stewart doesn’t mind criticizing the powers that be, and he paints some of his competitors in unflattering colors. It doesn’t come off as mean-spirited or with an agenda, instead they look like candid comments from an informed observer. But I cannot imagine seeing a book like this coming from an active driver in any series. It would be edited to death.
I would dearly love to see a modern version of this book written by, say, Dario Franchitti. I think it would do an immense amount to open up the world of Indycar to those of us who see it filtered primarily through the official tv and radio broadcasts.
Stewart’s book is 40 years old now, yet it’s still fresh and fascinating and once you get into it, it’s an interesting read. I knew almost nothing about F1, yet I still enjoyed it the first time I read it a decade ago, and I enjoyed it again on a recent re-read.
Four Stars (out of four): the best book co-written by a driver that I’ve yet to read.