I’ve put this off for a week or so, mainly because I’m lazy. But I’ve had a few people pestering me to give my account of Petit LeMans so here we go.

I’m running out of vacation. That is a pretty big statement from a guy that gets like 5 weeks or something crazy, which is a lot for anyone that doesn't live in France. Most of it has been spent racing (as my wife will tell you). This simple fact meant I couldn’t make it out to Road Atlanta (the site of Petit Lemans) until Thursday.

Petit LeMans is a pretty big deal. It is a 12 hour race for the American LeMans series which is probably the most successful road racing series still around. It is major league ball. The guys that race at this level don’t have ‘other jobs’. Car manufacturers spend a few million a year to field teams and race. It makes it onto NBC and ABC once or twice a season. Pretty cool. The race is 10 hours or 1000 miles whichever comes first. When I first went a few years ago the fastest class had qualifying times of 1.11 for a 2 mile and change track. Now they’re down into the high 1.06’s. The LMP cars are ‘almost’ as fast as Formula 1. That is pretty d@mn fast. To put it into perspective my best time at Road Atlanta I think is in the 1.46’s? That is per lap. 40 some odd seconds each lap of which they’ll do around 500. Of course my car is also an order of magnitude cheaper. My entire race ‘team’ (car included) and season budget wouldn’t buy tires for one of the GT2 (slowest class) efforts in this ONE race.

These race weekends usually have several supporting races beforehand to keep fans entertained while the big boys take their practice laps, qualifying, etc. One of these supporting races was the Speed World Challenge series that my buddies Seth Thomas and James Clay race in. James was super cool enough to score Craig and me some free tickets. So we headed up Thursday to watch them qualify and hang out.

Usually going to the race track puts a spring in my step a) I won’t be working and b) I like race tracks and race cars. Win / Win – right. Thursday and Friday were a lot of fun, but it wasn’t exactly an ‘uplifting’ experience. I’d gone to Petit LeMans 3 or so years running but it was usually as a ‘fan’. This year I was going slightly more educated to what it takes to run a team and try to make a living at doing this. It was eye opening to say the least. I’ve always felt that I’ve done pretty well for myself. You don’t get a racecar without having some level of disposable income, however after sitting around the ‘minor league’ paddock for a day it certainly made me much more humble (read depressed). 17 year old punk kids driving golf carts around with their 17 year old model girlfriends after driving $100-200k open wheel cars that they didn’t pay for. In the little corner of the paddock that we were in probably 3 million dollars worth of cars in a space that represented maybe 1/100th of the total available area. That is just the cars. Not the semi’s or trailers, or support vehicles, or the 7-8 crew guys that need to eat and have shirts, …. How many internet millionaires did the 90’s spit out and why wasn’t I one of them.

Anyway we watched qualifying and the BimmerWorld guys did roughly average. This was also pretty depressing considering how much work they put into the cars and that this track is Seth’s home and Clay’s home away from home. I immediately declare all of the other teams “cheaters”. That is a pretty basic rule in racing. If someone is in front of you they’re cheating in some vague way. More than likely though, it is simple economics. All of BimmerWorld’s competition enjoy financial support from their mother ship factories, in racing as in life money talks, bullsh!t walks.

Thursday night brings us an invitation from the Thomas family to join in a team “cookout”. We started the evening by shooting skeet, pistols, and an AR15 (think SWAT team). Seth’s dad was smart enough to have his entire property zoned as a ‘gun range’ so complaints from the neighbors don’t carry much weight! I think it helps that Seth’s family also pretty much invented Cumming, Georgia. We try to talk Clay into over eating (he has a second career as a competitive eater if he ever chooses to go in that direction), but his girlfriend is in town so he is on best behavior. We're provided some other lame excuse about ‘not healthy’, but we know the truth (cue whipping sound effects). The rest of the evening is spent lying about what awesome racers we all are, and trying to talk one of the BW pit crew into jumping in the pool fully clothed for money (it was maybe 50 degrees out).

Friday comes early and with the Touring Car race scheduled for 10am there isn’t much time for goofing off. Brendan Digel joins Craig and me for the fun, and we’re riding the shuttle bus into the paddock from the parking lot when the driver hits a building! Around Road Atlanta there are several, what I would call ‘pole barn’ out buildings. Our driver cut a corner too close and managed to scrape the entire side of his shuttle bus and pushes the corner of the building in a couple of inches. He doesn’t seem too concerned but around 20 people in the bus, most of them probably amateur racers like us are struggling not to giggle. It takes several minutes and multiple steering corrections to get us off the building, but no one else outside the bus seems too dismayed either. I wonder if anyone in charge will ever try and figure out how the building got hit?

I weasel a pit pass so that when the cars line up I’m right down in the action. Everyone is in ‘serious business’ mode so there isn’t a lot of joking around or smiling. I hang around until the cars line up for the standing start down on the track. Then it is off to turn 10 in a truck packed with 10 people. Road Racing requires more thought than other types of spectator sports from its fans. You can’t see the entire track so you have to be smart about where you set up. There are several good viewing locations for Road Atlanta but a classic spot is turn 10, at the end of the back straight away. Typically this is a good spot for passing action, even more so now since the main BW advantage is going to be their straight-line speed and braking. The nice folks at Speed TV have installed a super big jumbotron across the track so we can even try to keep up with the action at other parts of the track.

We’re green flag racing and Seth is in 5th spot and Clay is in 7th or so after the start. He is fighting with one of the Tri-Point Mazdas. For about 4 laps they come into 10a practically side by side with the Mazda on the inside protecting and Clay on the outside. The fifth or so time down, the Mazda tries to squeeze Clay over as they move into the braking zone and it appears that he locks a tire up under braking. Clay turns in and they get tangled up. Clay loses two positions but the Mazda is off the track and loses more. One of the cars directly ahead of him is another Tri-point Mazda piloted by Jason Saini. Its déjà vu as they come into 10a side by side for another few laps. Jason looks to squeeze Clay over even more aggressively to the point where from our vantage point it looks like he is in the grass with two wheels (coming down from 150+mph). They get tangled up and Saini ends up in the gravel trap and his race is over. Clay makes is around another lap or so before his car starts to overheat from busted radiator. #36 DNF.

You can see the first incident here Craig was taking some video from where we watched:

World Challenge Road Atlanta: Turn 10a: James Clay and Charles Espenlaub from Craig Geiger on Vimeo.

Seth is doing slight better and has managed to get into 4th place. The gravel trapped car brings out a double yellow hopefully giving Seth a shot at catching the lead cars and making a move for the podium. With the unfortunate BW luck that these guys still can’t shake he goes slightly off track in the famous ‘esses’ portion of Road Atlanta and somehow a tire starts rubbing and he ends up with the car overheating as well. He comes in early and it’s another DNF.

Nick Esayian the third car and a guy we met for the first time ends with a career high 6th place. Nick is a total hoot. He manages the Debt Cures book, infomercial, whatever. Look it up. He can really tell a story. He was telling us about some of his accidents and how in one you could see from his in-car camera when he hit the wall doing like 120mph or something crazy he got knocked out. You could see his arms go limp and his head slump over as the car kept going. He then came around (think guy waking up in bed but is really in a speeding car with no pilot) and grabs the steering wheel to get the car stopped. You’ll have to trust me when I say he made this all very funny. He had a good race and stayed out of trouble to end the season on a high note.

We’re back at the trailer going over the play by play of the race with the guys when Jason Saini comes up looking p!ssed off. Apparently during the awards presentation he had made some comments to one of the crew guys saying that the wreck was Clay’s fault. He then came up to James who respectfully disagreed with him. He is back and still wants to beat this dead horse. Keep in mind a) the season is over with this race b) we’re talking about 8th place or something stupid . They retreat into the trailer to watch the in-car footage. Nothing can be determined from that (at least to Jason’s satisfaction). Clay maintains that Jason squeezed him over, Clay held his position until they made contact, Clay then went to turn in. Jason ended up in a gravel trap. This is pretty much what we (the 6 or so people that watched from 10a) saw too. Jason leaves, but comes back 20 minutes later to keep the discussion alive. It ends up going to the SCCA officials that side with Clay. The rules of the series state that ‘racing’ room must be left for a car. You can’t drive into someone to move them out of the way. If they do, that car has no responsibility to move out of their established position.

Due to the broadcasting schedule with Speed nothing can be posted online (from the teams) until the race broadcasts on Wed. the 15th. I have the TIVO set so I can see the different angles but I’m pretty sure I know how it ends.

Saini – who from now on will be called “IN” Saini still wouldn’t let it go and came onto the main BMW forum to tell his side of the story. Unfortunately for him he didn’t convince anyone there either.

All it really did was make a lot of guys that probably would have been Saini fans see what an a$$hole he is. First you don’t yell at crew guys. They’re usually not well paid, and it isn’t anything they have control over anyway – they weren’t in the car. That is just chicken sh!t. When he finally screwed up the courage to talk to Clay face to face he lost a lot of his fire. Saini is a big enough guy, but Clay is probably 6’3 or 4 and anywhere from 230 – 250 depending on his relationship status (haha)… The bad part is Saini is a good story. Mazda is crazy about racing at the grassroots level. The Spec Miata series (which Spec E30) is based on, is probably the biggest amateur racing series today. They also give huge discounts on parts, contingencies, etc. You name it they support it. So why don’t I race Mazdas? Good question. It would probably make more sense. I hate miatas though. I really hate them. Who has ever looked cool driving a miata? No one. Anyway. One other super cool thing Mazda does is called their “ladder system”. In racing the only way you can get ahead at the top levels is to have $$$$$$$$$. Unlike other sports the best guy may be stuck driving around in a parking lot or beater series like ours. Mazda provides a system for guys with talent to move up the food chain. You win spec miata, you go to their semi-pro series MX-5 Cup, you win that, you go to World Challenge. And so on. IN Saini won the MX-5 Cup so they paid for his WC ride. That is a pretty cool story until you find out he is a total douche bag.

Labels: BimmerWorld, Petit LeMans, Road Atlanta, Wrecks