What can I say but that there are heroes at the racetrack.
Here’s what happened. I was that guy. That’s hard to say because generally I’m faultless as in without fault. Awesome. Generally. Those who know me know this.
But not last Thursday. I was that guy. I went the DE and put my car in the wall in T6 in the first session. I went in deep. Too deep. I found myself attempting to rimshot T6 and it ended badly. So badly that I was briefly upside down. Did a barrel roll in the air never touching the roof and landed back on my wheels. I would love to blame ninjas jumping out of nowhere because that’s what ninjas do but since there’s video and witnesses I must accept that I am but an imperfect. . . .never mind, I can’t finish that sentence.
It was bad. You know how things happen real fast but in the moment they kinda slow down. It was like that when I was upside down reflecting in amazement how secure I was in the seat and that all the safety stuff seemed to be working great. Then I landed right side up and turned the car off.
This is where Max Aleksak enters the story. Taller than me and handsome with a “can do” spirit. He looked at the car and asked me if I wanted to try to get it back on track. A smart person who had just cheated death would have immediately responded “no.” But I’m not smart. The hospital had released me with nothing more than advice to take some Advil so I pondered Max’s question for about 30 minutes and then said “If you think we can then let’s try it.”
If you don’t know Max he runs Provost Motorsports and has a regular stable of cars he supports. I’m not one of them. Regardless he jumped in to help me because he’s a very good man. And I’m forever grateful that he did.
Jojo, swarthy, taller than me, a fan of the straw hat, has a very calming smile and reassuring manner. And tools. Max and Jojo set to work pulling parts off. Lots of parts. And Max started hammering body work back into shape with the precision of, well, a guy with a 5 pound sledge. It was big risk because they had to use a great deal of their stash of white tape they keep for Hoyt’s car. And lots of it. Had Hoyt had an incident they would have had to use a different color of tape and that would have been embarrassing for Hoyt. Jojo replaced the radiators that were trashed and pounded the hood down to be closeable. And then what was left of the passenger door got screwed back on.
After many hours on an unseasonably hot day they had me back together.
The tech guy, not much taller than me, freaked when I brought the car to grid. Nope. No way in hell he was letting me out there. But good Ol’ Henry Hoe, much taller than me, let me go out on a checkered lap just to see if the car ran and ran straight. Very grateful for that because it turned left better than right so Max tweaked the front camber settings a bit and it was done.
Then my EZ-UP flew away. I mention this because it was just such a piss off. It was brand new. Never used. I took it out of the box for the first time the day before. In the middle of all my woes the constant 50 mph wind picked up my pop up that was tied down to sandbags and lashed to the pop up beside it and tossed it into the air like a tissue and it got hung up on the power lines behind our paddock spot. The 5 other pop ups in the exact same area as my pop up never moved. Only mine. Kind of a slap in the face. But I had more pressing matters to deal with.
The next hours were spent trying to find a windshield. Mine was shattered right down the left A pillar making it pretty difficult, I mean impossible, to see thru turns 6 and 9. Unfortunately for a fellow SPB but fortunately for me a windshield came available in a car that would not be able to continue. Charlie, also very tall and seemingly unflappable, at Innovative Autosports and Chris, the car owner, kindly agreed to let me have that windshield. So I called Safelite. No humans work at Safelite and the computer prompts don’t include “press 6 for windshield swaps at Watkins Glen International.” I finally dialed a local company, Choice Auto Glass, and a for real human woman (I assume but you never know these days) answered the phone. After repeatedly warning me that there were no guarantees that the good windshield wouldn’t break when attempting to remove it she said she’d work me into the schedule the next day and call me in the morning.
Friday came and I stared at my phone just waiting for it to ring. It did. Sometime between 2-2:30 they said. This was going to happen. The window man, very short, showed up and 15 minutes later he had the good window cut free without a crack. Awesomeness. By 3:30 I had a replacement windshield and a car ready to race!
This is the kind of thing you can’t put a price on. At first it seemed like a lark to try to get back on track but then everyone I talked to or asked for help did in fact help. The racing community got very small in that moment. Like a family. My paddock mates were very encouraging when they weren’t writing funny things on my car like “Mayhem was here” or “Accident free for 769 0 Days.” It was suggested that I need new friends. I probably do but I’ll keep Steve Wilson. Steadfast, same jacket since I’ve known him, reliable. The rest of them are clowns.
I took the car up to tech and confused the bejesus out of Keith, again taller than me, as he had thought all the damage happened that day but we sorted it all out and he gave me the stamp of approval to compete the next day.
And so I did. I had to get back out there. The old get back on the horse philosophy. And I’m glad of it. Saturday warm up was much better than I expected. Worked up slowly just in case anything flew off or snapped. The car held together and was drivable. Max and Jojo know how to put a racecar back together that’s for sure.
Starting from the back row of 32 cars for sprint 1 I was able to work up to 7th in class with the 5th fastest lap time. Maybe my fellow racers assumed I was past caring if I rubbed a fender or two what with all the Armco blue stripes on my car. Maybe they saw I was missing a mirror so maybe don’t pass me on the right. Whatever the reason it was a ball and just what I needed to forget about Thursday and remind me why I race in the first place.
Videographical awesomeness here:
