Night Moves David Soares on being left in the dark This year sportscar faithful on the Left Coast finally got a chance to breathe the pure oxygen that sets the ALMS apart from all other forms of motorsport with a four-hour into-the-night enduro at Mazda Raceway at Laguna Seca. The Real Deal Why should I care? Since I’ve been knee-high to a grasshopper the Real Deal in sportscar racing has been the 24 Hours of Le Mans. From my first Matchbox D- type and tin-toy Testa Rossa, through Jim McKay and Chris Economacki recounting Henry Ford II’s obsession on the Wild World of Sports, to sitting in a darkened theater watching multiple screenings of Steve McQueen’s classic film Le Mans, I’ve figured that racing through the countryside around the clock is tougher on man and machine than going around the Brickyard, circling the high banks of the Tri-oval, or winding ‘round the houses and through Casino Square. Some cried “gimmick” when it was announced that there would be a night race at Laguna this year, but I figured that this would be the perfect opportunity to see the cars that race in the Big Show in their true element without having to explain to my boss, my wife, and my kids that I was skipping this month’s mortgage payment and going to France without them. Coming to grips…. I suppose that the biggest pre-race knock on this event was that cars designed to race at high speed through the French countryside from dusk to dawn to dusk seem a bit over-built to wind through the oak trees of central California. Laguna Seca has always been more of a sprint circuit than anything else. The infield extension added in the late Eighties to bring the track up to international length took out the fastest sections and made it even less like the country highways of the eight-and-a-half mile Circuit Permenante de la Sarthe. On the plus side, despite the “improvements” demanded for the Champ Cars and GP bikes, you can still make out the Fort Ord perimeter roads that origianally defined the circuit. Laguna isn’t one of those glorified kart tracks; cars dominant everywhere else often can’t find grip around the old lakebed. I came away from the weekend satisfied that I hadn’t just shown up for a demonstration run. The crowds who thronged the open grid and then lined the fences at every corner weren’t simply a bunch of rubes hoodwinked by a gimmick cooked up by promoters with nothing to show. They were a knowledgeable group of road-racing faithful who got to see a decent race weekend from start to finish. Hardcore fans got an early tease with a balmy Thursday night-practice. The decent-sized group who showed up for Friday qualifying witnessed a terrific spectacle at the sharp end of the field. Dyson’s Lolas struggled to find traction while Nic Minassian took advantage of his Zytec’s power delivery to out-stick the Champion Audis of Johnny Herbert and J.J. Lehto for the pole. Holly came from Miami FLA… On Saturday I decided to join the newly featured pre-race “fan walk” of the starting grid. In among the hundreds of fans and the “flag and umbrella girls” I ran into a woman with a genuine reason to have a smile pasted on her face: Mazda Raceway at Laguna Seca CEO Gill Campbell. I stopped to congratulate her on the substantial crowd still streaming in for the four o’clock start. She allowed as how it had been a huge struggle to pull this one off; she wouldn’t be ready to believe it until all these people had cleared from start-finish. The gate has been iffy on four- wheel racing all year, the title sponsor pulled out weeks before the race, and the usual suspects act surprised that they have been sold palazzi next to a racetrack that has been operating continuously for five decades. This afternoon Gill was standing in a crowd so packed that you couldn’t walk from one end of the grid to the other; it was obvious to me that she was giving the people what they’ve been wanting. All things Green….. Once the green flag dropped we got to see plenty of drama, from upstart challenger Minassian setting a blistering pace dicing with Lehto at the front, to Herbert’s master class in carving through the field after a first-lap spin to put his teammate in position to pounce at the end. The GTS and GT classes were down to inter-team rivalries, but even those held a few surprises before it was over. When the night and then the rain came we really got to see what makes this kind of racing unique. Absent was the wholesale carnage demonstrated in rival series when conditions turn less than perfect. Our neighbor among the campers below Turn Nine was an old Cal-Club flagger from Riverside Raceway who of late has been a devotee of Champ Cars. As we sat by the light of our tiki torches he was ecstatic over racing in the dark and the rain. This motorhead could have cared less that the race boiled down to a few two-car contests by the mid-point; tens of thousands used to turn up to see which orange car would win at Riverside or Laguna. We were just digging fast cars sending up rooster-tails of water in the headlights as they cut and thrust through traffic. Watching the superb Champion Audis brought us that old buzz you can only get from breathing the pure stuff. We’ve had a lot of great road racing in this country over the second half of the twentieth century, but even Big-Daddy Can-Am only lasted eight seasons from 1967 until 1974. Ironically, both Sebring and Daytona started out as promoters’ attempts to hook into the mystique of Le Mans and European sportscar racing, although there have always been issues about whether they should be part of international championships or strictly home-grown affairs. Over There, Over There…. In the meantime a couple of hundred thousand people are still celebrating the Summer Solstice over in France every year with a sportscar race. Automobile racing is as much about celebrating traditions and connections as it is about speed and endurance. Ever since Americans went over to kick out the Nazis we have been connected with this celebration. Our cars have been there; our drivers have been there; our teams have been there. This year at Le Mans Clint Field and Rick Sutherland beat the locals in P2. Doug Fehan’s Team Corvette slugged it out with a slew of European Ferraris and came out on top in GTS. Patrick Long cracked the top-10 while winning GT in Mike Peterson and Dale White’s Porsche, with support from Alex Job. Dave Maraj and Brad Kettler brought back their Audi R8 as defending P900 champs; their superior organization recovered from a catastrophic off (on oil) to a podium finish. The Brits have their cross-channel ferries, but it’s a major effort and expense for American fans, especially inhabitants of the west coast, to decamp to the Sarthe every year to see our teams. For motor racing to be successful as marketing tool it makes perfect sense for these teams and their sponsors to take their hard- earned credibility and bring it home. As we sipped our single-malts by the fence we knew that weren’t just watching a bunch of wanna-be’s on a demonstration run. We thought; these are the guys and this is what they do. An American fan Internationalism may currently be out of vogue, but I think that American fans deserve to be a part of the show. We deserve more than five-eighths scale replica racing. We deserve the real thing. Why should I care? Because I always have. David Soares Somewhere in Hawaii October 2004 |
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