Racing Bench Stories

[gran racing]

Hey guys,

I'm in the process of building a new website where I’ll be posting the contents of my book and will also include a section for racing bench stories. Might you have a bench story you'd be willing to share with people on my site? The length is completely up to you and can be anything ranging from racing, paddock or towing stories.

Send it to [email protected] .

I wrote up one of my stories when traveling to my first comp school. What an experience towing up there; something that I’m now able to laugh at but wasn’t so funny at the time!

Hope to hear from you soon.
Thanks!!

[JeffYoung]

I had a racoon shit in my car at CMP.

[Parrish57]

I had a racoon shit in my car at CMP.

Of your 2,494 post that has to be one of your more erudite!

[dj10]

I had a racoon shit in my car at CMP.

Rumor has it Jeff, that wasn't a racoon.

[JeffYoung]

Dammit, I forgot. We did identify as coming from a BMW driver.........

It was small though. Looked like it had been forced through an SIR.

Rumor has it Jeff, that wasn't a racoon.

[Parrish57]

Dammit, I forgot. We did identify as coming from a BMW driver.........

It was small though. Looked like it had been forced through an SIR.

Are you saying they put the BM in BMW?

[JeffYoung]

No, I'm saying a BMW driver put an SIR in his ass and shat in my car!

[tom_sprecher]

That would be the South Atlantic Road Racing Championships Invitational Challenge for those of you unfortunate enough to not live in the South; I was pulling my driver out of a "personal" booth upstairs at a titty bar across the Savannah River in SC at 3 am. He had two babes in there and a grin from ear to ear.

I can't remember if he won the race the next day but he was the SARRC Champ that year for the second year in a row.

[freeland]

What luck Dave!

Just one day and you've got two great stories!!!

Joe Freeland

[924Guy]

My second weekend of racing, was cold and wet... my wife, who was at the time the team chef (before we even started dating!), had planned some real nice meals for the crew, inside-out cheeseburgers, perfect for a cold wet day.

I just barely caught her in time before she fired up the hibachi. She'd secured it on a board... perched on top of my two gas cans!!!

Can't forget the occasion of my first win, this when I was back in ITA quite some years ago. The Mosers and Byersdorf also called Waterford their home track, so I was always just struggling to be "fastest in non-Honda" and never really worried about a podium finish. Then one race, there was major kerfuffle up front (between those guys), and then one remaining CRX in front of me dropped out while I was chasing him down. Cruised to the checker, came in for tire temps, and got waved on by my crew to pick up the checker and take a victory lap! I'd had NO idea where I was in the running order. This was also my father's first time to the racetrack, and IIRC he got to take the checker!

Then there was the worst weekend ever. Afterwards I got a new paint job and a new motor. But there was a lot that transpired between. Weekend format at Waterford is just like the IT-Fest; one (10 minute) qual session, then 3 races - one Sat PM, and two on Sunday. I take the car out for qual, and the engine locks up coming onto the front straight at the end of the first lap. Dead, done, siezed right up with a spun bearing.

Drag it back in at the end of the session, OK, weekend's over. But my crew talks about it and says, hey, we're signed up for the weekend - you want our help to put that spare junkyard motor in, we'll do it! So we push the car onto the trailer, and drag it back home for surgery.

6 hours of wrenching later, the car is running again with a very used motor - a huge accomplishment for our crew!

Took it out for emergency practice, yep, runs OK! Line up at the back for the first race of the day, take the green, and start to see what I can do. We get, I dunno, a few good hot laps, then again there's some mess up front and some cars take eachother out, putting us under full-course caution. I start looking around, realize that I'm 3rd in class, I'm not only right behind a slow Fiero that I can take, if I get by him, then there's the Miata who's now leading ITA! Furthermore, I may have a shot at her, since I've run with her before, might be able to pass her! I can also see my oil pressure, and it's UGLY. This motor is done. It won't survive another race; 2-4 bar is marginal.

So I've got nothing to lose, and I'm going to push for it, take those positions.

Heh heh. Famous last words. I push hard at the restart, and we've now got, I dunno, only 2-3 laps left. I'm all over the Fear-O, putting some moves, but getting blocked hard. The only way I'll take him is again, a solid run through Big Bend onto the back straight carrying all the speed he can't.

Now, Big Bend (aka Turn 5) is a fast, flat LH'er, like Mid-O turn 1 without the bridge blocking the view, but with a wall 6' off the edge of the track driver's left. I apex it, these days, at around 73mph, with just a slight lift. Those days, I didn't have enough power to need to lift, I wasn't going into the corner fast enough; it was flat-out, if I got the inputs right.

Well, last lap, I didn't. The car got sideways on me, and snapped around into the wall, a hard hit on the right rear. Did substantial damage, blew the hatch out, snapped the CV joint, bent a lot of metal. I had blacked out briefly, but was generally OK... but I stayed put in the car, because I knew the race was about to end, and I was in a very dangerous spot to be walking about! So I dropped my net (been watching too many pro races!) and waited for the corner workers... first responder was a good friend, who hadn't seen me moving in the car and was fearing the worst.

Meanwhile, my fiance (we were due to be married that fall) had seen the whole thing, and immediately started RUNNING down to me, barely got caught trying to run out on track by another good friend and fellow racer who happened to be in the right place at the right time, and big enough to stop a charging fiance!! My mother, meanwhile, who was at her first (and only - she's now banned from the track!) race, took it a little more in stride, no doubt from having watched me grow up.

I was OK, but shaken, took the ride in the bambulance back, then started blacking out a bit in the paddock (had actually bonked my helmet, it turned out), so got a second ambulance ride to the hospital with my mother and fiance giving chase. Eventually signed off OK, got back to the track and helped the crew pick up the pieces of my crashed, blowed-up racecar.

A few days later, my cornerworker friends (who'd been first to the car) mention they have my 3rd-place trophy for that race, and drop it off. They'd picked it up at the awards ceremony I'd bailed on (no surprise).

Turns out the starters had mussed the lap count, due to the mess that took out the leaders and caused the double yellow, so I ACTUALLY CRASHED THE CAR ON AN IDIOT MOVE AFTER THE RACE WAS OVER!!! I was still in 3rd after the official end of the race, but the checker flew late.

Talk about boneheaded moves... of course, moral of the story is never say you've got nothing to lose - you'll find you've forgotten about something! That and never let your mother come watch you race - but dad's always an asset!