A couple of things that got missed (I clicked on Deliver way
too early):
- No, I don't mean you're supposed to put race gas in the
tow car. If I'd re-read the article before I clicked,
I would have fixed that.
- The True Cost theory: here it is from another message to
a different list last week:
Every dollar below the True Cost that you save on the initial
purchase -- thinking to buy a cheap one and fix it up for yourself --
translates to two or three dollars over the True Cost by the time
you actually get the car done.
Got that? So for a Spridget, which has an approximate True Cost
of $4000, this means that a $1500 rat-bag is going to run you as
much as $6500 to $9000 by the time you have it as nice as one
you could have bought for $4000 in the first place. Welcome to
entropy, here's your accordion.
This is even more true for racing. Race-car parts (TRS, which of
course we all know stands for Trick Racing, uh, Stuff) cost an
inordinate amount of money new, but due to the wear and tear
involved in competition, they're worth next to nothing the moment
you put them on a race car. This means that typically the race
car that costs you $10,000 to build, you can sell for $4000. Now,
if you're smart, you'll realize that this means that you can buy
a $10,000 race car for $4000 if you find someone who's getting
out of the class, or who's retiring, or who just can't keep up
with the expenses or the strain. But you'll still have to have
money to go over the car and find out why the guy is selling it.
About driving schools: They're the best way to start, because
you can usually concentrate on the fun rather than on the effort
of getting the car on track. You can also determine, at a cost
of typically only a couple thousand dollars, whether you have any
real interest or for that matter, aptitude. I should also say
that if you have any trepidations about throwing $2000 at a three-
day opportunity to drive someone else's car around a race track,
with nothing to show for it but the grin and some weak memories,
then racing isn't for you. Far better to throw $2000 at such an
event than to sink $10,000 plus most of a year to come to the
same conclusion. And with the new rules, that $2000 gets you an
SCCA competition license for regional racing at a number of schools.
There are some other racing classes, categories, and philosophies.
I'll cover just a few of them here:
- Vintage racing. In another list, I talk about the dichotomy
in motorsports: some people love cars and approach racing as
the ultimate expression of what cars can do, while others
love to compete and approach racing as a way of competing in
a high-thrills, high-stakes game that, almost coincidentally,
happens to use cars. Vintage events are more tailored, by
their nature, to the first class of people, while the SCCA,
as a body dedicated to providing competitive motorsports for
amateur and professional drivers, is strongly aligned with
the latter.
What this means is that in most Vintage organizations, you
won't have to keep up with the latest demon tweaks, you can
probably use tires that will last most of a season instead
of most of a weekend, and you can figure on a lower risk of
body damage from overcompetitive and underexperienced drivers.
You may also find yourself on course with vastly cooler old
sports cars, if that's what turns you on (me! me! me!!!)
- Solo I. Also sometimes called time trials, Solo I is an
SCCA competition venue in which the cars run on race tracks,
but with few enough (and with enough distance between them)
that they don't get involved with wheel-to-wheel racing.
It's not much less expensive than road racing, though the
risks are marginally lower; some people actually put the
required safety gear (which is less than for road racing)
into their street cars and drive them to and from the track.
Solo I events are timed, so there is a goal (winning), but
it's also a good way to practice driving at high speeds on
a race track.
- Solo II. This is what you may have heard some of us refer to
as autocross. It's a sort of like Olympic slalom skiing for
cars: you take a big parking lot (since cars don't have to go
downhill for power), draw a twisty little course on it with
chalk and orange traffic cones, and then set up timers. The
cars are organized into classes that roughly represent how
much money their manufacturer has spent with the SCCA's advertising
departm--uh, that roughly represent their performance potential. :-)
Solo II is fairly cheap, assuming your car mostly works and can
pass technical inspection (brakes good, wheel bearings aren't loose,
no oil drips, throttle return springs okay, no cord on tires, seatbelts
work). You don't have to put a roll bar in, even in convertibles,
at least not in the street-vehicle classes; most autocrossers drive
to the event, compete, and drive home. Speeds are typically under
45 mph, but the cornering events come close enough together that
you are constantly challenged. And just to make it extra fun, each
autocross course is different from all others -- every event has
its own course, so you not only have to drive well, you have to
learn the course quickly. It's more challenging than you may think.
And now for the conclusion... Having thus told you how terribly expensive
and arduous it is to go racing, why would anyone want to do it?
Not everyone does. Even some people who try it decide that it isn't
worth the effort and cost. Some people race for a season, figure that
it's helping their driving skills on the street, and back off after a
brief introduction.
Some people, on the other hand, willingly give up everything else in
order to be able to concentrate on racing. The late Ayrton Senna,
three times a world champion at the sport's highest level, divorced
his first wife because he knew he would have to leave her in Brazil
if he wanted to pursue racing without distractions or complications.
Is it worth it? Only you can make that decision for yourself. For
me, it's not worth my kids' childhoods, or the next stage of my
career; I'm taking a temporary leave from racing because I'm too much
in love with a pair of little girls who burst out of the house and run
across the lawn to be with me (and also to ride in the M.G. when I've
been driving it). But when those girls become teenagers, and the only
time they communicate with me in more than a grunt is to ask me for
money, I'll have the Nomex dry-cleaned and start shopping for the
proverbial "good school or regional car, lots of spares, must sell."
Why?
Because I can still remember what it feels like to be pushed onto pre-
grid and start attaching the harnesses, while people in red shirts and
white pants blow the five-minute whistle. I can remember going over
the checklist, feeling my stomach tighten as the sign for three minutes
pops up and my crew snugs me in, so tight across my chest I can barely
breathe. I remember the smell of musty Nomex inside my helmet, salty
with old sweat and bittersweet with fear.
I remember what it feels like, inside the heavy glove, to flip up
the aircraft switches for master and fuel, and then to hit the starter
button. There's a grinding for a few seconds and then a bang and a
roar as the engine catches, screaming at a 2000 RPM idle from an
unmuffled exhaust just below my tailbone. I watch the oil pressure
and temperature gauges while they hold up two fingers; I can see the
grid marshall's diaphragm contract twice signifying two blasts on
the whistle, but I can't hear it over the howl of the exhaust and
the pounding of my own blood in my ears.
And then the signal! They wave their arms in a circle and the multicolored
dragon, the whole pack of race cars, jerks and starts as we move from
the pregrid to the track. We follow the pace car, keeping things slow
while fluids and tires and drivers come up to temperature; some cars
do the snake dance of tire-warming, others run up and slow down to bed
in the brakes on the slow, interminable pace lap. But we come down the
back of the course, pass the pit entrance, and see the pace car's lights
take the cut behind the tirewall. The front of the pack bunches up
behind the leaders, I snug my way into the field, there's a lag as the
backmarkers round the final corner and I can hear over my own exhaust
the sound of the first rows taking the green flag and I *punch* it.
The seat presses me, the revs cross the 4000 mark and the cam is *on*
now, pulling me up to the redline; shift, keep the revs up and I'm pulling
strongly now under the starter's stand, grey concrete shooting past
like shrapnel in my peripheral vision.
Then it's trying to get into the rhythm of the course, the feel for
braking, turn-in, apex, and power in each unique set of corners, and
trying to feel them as a larger and larger group of actions. The
car wants to slip off the track at the exit of every turn, but through
skill, and desire, and plain raw burning will I manage to keep it on
the asphalt. I catch someone who gridded ahead of me and follow him
for several turns, watching for mistakes -- there's one, he takes
turn seven slower than I can. I harry him for a lap, falling back
slightly as his larger engine pulls away when the track opens up,
but Sears is a technical course not a power course, and when we come
back up to Seven I hold back at the entry, let him think I've given
up the fight, and then as he's still braking I'm on the gas *hard*
going *into* the turn, betting that I can keep the power down and
not slide off into the hillside, betting the car and maybe a few
bones that I can be going faster at the exit of the corner than
he can. It's a bet that pits ego against brains... and this time
the ego wins: I catch up to his doorhandle halfway through the
turn, I'm on the outside, if he takes up the whole track I'll get
pushed off into the dirt but I'm *through!* and he slips into my
mirrors as I whistle down the increasing-radius esses, my brain
screaming louder than the unmuffled exhaust that this is what it
means to be *alive* -- not just to drive fast, but to drive *faster
than someone else*.
That's a little bit of what racing is like.
Is it worth it?
Hell. Did you ever fall so much in love with someone that it hurt
to look at her, that life consisted of two phases -- being inside
her, and screaming with frustration and rage at the time it took to
get there again -- and did you have that love fall apart and rip
you up when you saw her with someone else, and all the things you
had, and did, and shared tore at you like acid in the eyes when you
saw them?
Was *that* worth it?
Racing is like that, only more so.
--Scott Fisher
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