sfisher@abingdon.wpd.sgi.com (Scott Fisher) (02/21/90)
Well, Andy has mentioned his side of the story at Sears Point, but I'd been asked to make some notes about what it's like to work in the pits, as well as to recount some of the, er, more savory events of the day. Here's my account... A Cold Lap (and its, ahem, reverse side) at Sears Point Saturday, February 17th was the third day of the SCCA Driver's School held at Sears Point Raceway here in the Bay Area. I had agreed to help a couple of fellow MG enthusiasts, Andy Banta and Sam Sjogren, who were racing an EP MGB-GT and an ITB MGB Tourer, respectively. Many of you have probably read their report of the first weekend. Well, this is what it's like to crew for a first-class operation such as Team FizzBall. As Sam would say, "It was a dark and stormy morning." I got up at some ungodly hour of the morning, my family getting ready to come with me (they were going on to the Napa Valley to visit friends). The dawn in Sunnyvale was beautiful, worth getting up to see: luminous pink clouds lit from below by a brilliant sun. By the time we got to San Mateo, the clouds had won and the sun had apparently packed up and gone home. We crossed the Golden Gate bridge, mercifully missing the previous day's 62-mph winds, and pulled into the paddock at Sears just about the time the clouds admitted they had been warming up and were now ready to show us some *real* weather. The SCCA was its usual self, which is to say they were trying to prove that Hitler's SS were a pack of disorganized, lenient goof-offs. At length I located the luxurious Team FizzBall motorhome, got a pit voucher from Andy, and got my magic blue paper that said I too could stand out in the rain at trackside and wonder whether I'd get smacked by an errant Spec Racer before I died of exposure or contracted Bell's Palsy. None of the above happened, however, and in fact the day started to get fun about the time I realized that motorhomes have roofs and heaters. Sam's run group was out first; I trudged alongside the red #6 MGB, helping Sam go through the checklist and settling into the routine of preparing to race. We got the belts tight, made sure the bonnet was secure, gave the Wink mirror's knob another twist to tighten it, and as the minute-by-minute countdown neared zero, the excitement mounted. So did the rain. Sam managed to complete two 360s and one 180 in that session, but we noticed the unmistakable smell of coolant as he pulled off the course. It wasn't serious at that time; we figured it was just the overflow tank (cleverly improvised out of a plastic Castrol container) and Sam decided to go off and, as he put it, "hose down the engine compartment." This proved too much of a temptation for one of the other crewmembers, Jeff who-would-probably-rather-I-didn't-reveal-his- last-name. Jeff, it should be noted, likes to play with air-cooled vehicles and was a little, shall we say, confused about the nature of water-cooled engines -- or rather, about the chemical makeup of their coolant. He offered to hose Sam's engine down personally, but he choked under pressure and Sam drove off. We got Andy's MGB-GT ready for his session, setting the tire pressures and checking the various body panels (Andy, you might remember, learned about hood pins when he discovered that his MGB-GT had been equipped with the optional peril-sensitive bonnet that flies up and obscures all visibility through the windscreen when it senses danger). I watched Andy wriggle through the roll cage, helped him get strapped into the car, and fastened the window net, feeling like a squire attending to a knight as he donned his armor before battle, or the assistant to a matador preparing to enter the corrida de toros. Andy set off into the heavy rain. Two laps under yellow, then the green flag dropped and Andy set off out of our field of vision. We watched... and watched... and watched... until one of the crew said, "Has something happened to Andy?" "Didn't you hear?" someone else said. "Car #73 is stuck in the mud outside of Turn 8 and needs a tow." A few minutes later, we got to see what happens when you make an MGB-GT into a swamp buggy as Andy pulled off the track and into the paddock. A quick inspection proved that MGBs really are built like tanks -- no damage -- so we pushed the GT over to the motorhome and cleaned it up. Sam's session was next, and we were all ready, including Jeff who had consumed a pot or two of coffee. "I'd like to have some support in the hot pit," Sam said as he started wiping the rain from his helmet and visor. "Take a bottle of coolant and some duct tape and stand just inside the pit wall. If you see me come off the track, jump over the wall and wave to me so I'll know where to stop. If I've just been black-flagged, I'll drive past you to the black-flag station and see what's wrong, but if I stop here be ready to help." Sam made some decent runs in the 3:02 range, which was pretty fair for a novice driving in 2" of water on street A008s, which are the world's second worst treaded tires when it rains. (The winner is still the Pos-A-Traction Torque Twister, which has all the grip of a waxed eel if you even so much as drive within, say, 600 feet of open water.) A few minutes before the end of the session, Sam pulled off into the pit lane, so I stood up on the wall (just in case the problem that was taking him off the course was a brake system failure) and hopped down to help when he came to a stop in front of me. Once more, it was clear that the cooling system wasn't happy. The needle on the temperature gauge was almost at the H, and clouds of sickly-sweet steam from under the hood left no doubt that there was a fairly serious leak somewhere. Sam released the bonnet and I lifted it, and we could see where the problem was: the end of the upper radiator hose, and we're in luck -- it's just loose. A quick poll of nearby workers located a screwdriver ("Hey, if you can't fix it with coolant and duct tape, we'll have to tow it home anyway") located a screwdriver, and just as we got to twisting the loose hose clamp, an event steward politely informed us that the session had been red-flagged and we weren't supposed to work during a red flag. "You aren't in any trouble since this is a school, but that's how the rule goes." He let us finish tightening the hose clamps, we filled the radiator with some of the coolant, and Sam pulled off course. "I'm going to hose the motor down again," Sam said as he got out of the car. This time, Jeff was ready -- and so was Larry's camera. To the horror, chagrin, embarrassment and amusement of the south end of the paddock, Jeff won the Dick Trickle award for the weekend and proceeded to douse Sam's engine compartment with a golden stream that turned into acrid clouds as it touched the hot engine block. "You son-of-a-bitch!" Sam bellowed when he tried to start the car. "You peed in my distributor! Take that cap off and *clean it*!" Jeff obliged, the car started, and Sam went off to give it a more thorough cleaning than before, ultimately including a session in front of the heat gun to get rid of any moisture. "Well," Andy suggested, "this gives new meaning to the phrase, `Be the first on your block...'" Compared to that, the rest of the day was almost boring. Our trackside cooling-system repair held for the rest of the session, and Sam managed to pull some fairly clean laps in spite of hail that almost completely covered the track surface -- in the paddock, there was more white than black on the ground. Andy managed to find the limit in a couple of new turns, ending up the day having spun in every turn except 1, 9 and 11. But that's what school is for, getting the feel of the course (and of its teeth) when there's nothing at stake but a little pride -- no points, no position, no sponsor embarrassment.