You probably can’t learn to run a race team in four days, but we don’t know how to build a race car either so let’s not get caught up in the details. Using our Ready, Fire, Aim approach to this pro racing thing – since we had purchased and stripped a car, I figured it might be a good idea to actually see how a Grand-Am event runs. I had been to this same race last year when the BimmerWorld crew were doing their due diligence on the series (before they made a decision, announcement, and bought / stripped a donor) as a spectator but that doesn’t always give you the subtle details working behind the scenes allows.
I made my gracious offer to Clay, that in return for credentials, food, and lodging I’d serve as his apprentice team owner. For my mental model I used a combination of Roger Penske and James when he fell off the team transporter, basically a guy looking grumpy wearing some type of hat, sunglasses, and radio earphones. We started negotiating on specific duties based on my diverse skill set – eventually settling on Car Helper / Tool Fetcher as my official title, which I modified to “Chief” Car Helper / Tool Fetcher due to the fact that I was the only one with that job description. I still maintain I could have served as Dave White’s security detail, but will reluctantly acknowledge that he wasn’t swarmed by female groupies like Patrick Dempsey and his four police officers so in hindsight probably not the best use of my time, that is the call an experienced team owner makes. He also made me promise to bring Craig.
DTOM Security Detail
When we got there we were asked to reprise our roles from the famous car stripping video i.e. Craig Geiger as President of the Film Club, and Jim Robinson caterer. Then at the end of each day James or Jason Marks would ask “Did you learn anything today?” I certainly did! I know where all the fast food spots in Leeds, AL are. Now how that connects exactly to managing a professional racing team I’m still a little foggy on, but I’m sure it will come into focus down the road. Thankfully we also were able to sneak in Ted, Jason, and Brendan and they got a chance to look over the cars, ask intelligent questions, and receive intelligent answers from Marks, Ryan Kuhn, Dave Simpkins, et al.
Craig’s handy work.
In addition to getting lunch I also tried to generally stay out of the way, the BW crew does an amazing amount of work getting the cars prepped and ready, setup changes, not to mention some of the obiligatory work required like packing & unpacking the rig, Grand-Am inspections, etc. This just reinforced my opinion that driving the car is somewhat the easy part in all of this, having the right support people are crucial to success. Wayne Yawn the team’s engineer also dazzled us with his 911 engine trivia and successfully answered Craig’s one tough question – “Why are manhole covers round?”. His friend Amy showed some awesome jump rope skills too, the most attention I think the team got all weekend was when she was jumping rope – see a small taste here.
Since we’re talking about Barber it wouldn’t be right if I didn’t complain about the track a bit. First of all it is a coin toss between which is more miserable; standing outside in the paddock when it is 100+ degrees, or standing in the paddock with huge clouds of pollen floating around. By the end of four days I was ready to pluck my eyes out of my head. Unfortunately every time I had a run in with the legendary paddock police of Barber, Clay was sitting right alongside tsk tsk-ing me into not running over cones or people, and not destroying property. I took some satisfaction in seeing the huge grassy fields that they use for parking absolutely destroyed by the heavy rain that came through on Thursday. It was a total mess.
“Ha Ha” – Nelson from the Simpsons
Superstar racer Randy Pobst was making his own parking space all weekend to keep his baller ride clean, I had to one up him.
Another thing I ‘learned’ while standing on the pit lane was more about the Indy Racing League than Grand-Am. There is always a higher level. Grand-Am has some nice stuff, there are pro teams that have huge semi’s, big dollar stuff. IRL takes that and turns it to 11. There wasn’t a guy on pit lane that looked like he’d ever changed his own oil. They looked more like engineers and computer geeks. They had massive ‘war wagon’s’ with seats and awnings, and carbon fiber bits. They had huge antennas for telemetry and weather gizmos. In short probably about as close to Formula One cr@p that you’ll ever see in Alabama. Also all the drivers are like Shetland people. Danica Patrick is a tiny tiny grumpy girl, Helio Castoroneesess (The dancing with the star tax cheat guy), Tony Kannan? All borderline midgets.
How much does the umbrella holder guy make a year?
So after 3 days of car helping and fetching lunch, Clay introduced me to my race time duty – “Deadman”. The picture will help explain; basically the GA fuel rig has a valve that someone has to hold open while the car pits and fuels. I’d like to think they call it the “Deadman” because it so easy a dead man could do it, but in fact its called that because when it blows up and the dude holding the valve open falls to the ground as a pile of ash the fuel shuts off and saves everyone else that isn’t standing next to a firework. I didn’t give this a second thought, and with Clay’s encouragement of “Don’t screw this up” I figured no problem.
Pull the yellow handle and don’t blow up – Mini in background pre-blaze.
Since it was very easy I didn’t screw it up, I only mention this because it has forced a review of my well documented safety first policy. Here I am in jeans and a golf shirt surrounded by dudes in nomex fire gear next to 60+ gallons of fuel when towards the end of the race a Mini goes up in flames. Not – ohh a leaf got caught on the exhaust and started smoking, a “WHOOSH” and oh sh!t they’re pulling that dude out of the car on fire, type fire. No one was hurt, and we had earlier noticed that one of the Mini’s were leaking fuel into a puddle but assumed it had dried up. Well whatever problem it had didn’t fix itself, unless you count burning to a crisp a ‘fix’. The pit crews put the fire out three times, before the big fire truck dudes rolled up and foamed it down. Unfortunately we’re not building a Mini otherwise I would have seen if the wheels were for sale since that is about all that wasn’t a melting pile of cr@p afterwards.
Mini – post blaze.
In summary what did my apprenticeship teach me? Well that if you need a guy to feed between 10 and 16 people with fast food, I may be your man. Craig is really good at sticking a bunch of cameras on a car and pressing a button. You wear fire proof snowsuits for a reason. Grand-Am looks like a lot of work. The End.
Congrats to Dave White for sitting on the Pole! Pictured here in his second big time interview – remember hands down.
Here Dave celebrates sitting on the Pole, who says racers aren’t athletes.