The good news is that we all got to go home early.
The bad news is that Black Betty overheated just nineteen laps into what would prove to be a 380-lap race. Matt “Tinman” Johnston was behind the wheel in third place, having just overtaken the Jalopnik/Axis Of Oversteer E36 BMW, when the radiator blew at least two holes at once.
Our friend Travis Okulski and the rest of his team didn’t enjoy the fruits of our failure for very long; they dropped out at lap 86 for clutch problems and managed only fourteen more laps after a six-hour repair job, none of which were particularly fast, before calling it a day. So the Jalopnik-v-R&T/TTAC showdown came down to four DNFs. This was not great news for the very professional and well-equipped video team that Matt Hardigree brought to the track; they were hoping for Ferrari vs. McLaren and got Marussia vs. Caterham instead.
Mark’s catching a plane to his next thing. Tinman’s taking Betty back to the shop to make sure we’re ready for the next race. Until then, if you need me, I’ll be in my cubicle, half-asleep, half-dreaming, just another inmate of the quotidian, facing the fabric-covered wall and thinking about what might have been.
Amici probantur rebus adversus. May it be thus with you three.
So it’ll be a crushingly normal Monday for you, me and everyone else who isn’t self-employed then?
So are you rubbing your nutsack on the trophy or not?
I was about to ask you yesterday if that was the FC with the 3800 swap. Your picture just answered my question.
And, at least you can mourn the loss in your fabric walled prison. On the upside, the sun is shinning close to my window.
Y’know? This is the video I want to see. Everybody’s super-willing to make the next Truth in 24, starring themselves. I want to see Fail in 4 and all the aftermath of when stuff goes belly-up.
This.
I guess it would be logistically difficult or expensive to find an appropriate facility, but it seems to me that before you go endurance racing with a car, you just might want to put it through a shakedown session for an hour at race pace. Seems to me that reliability might be more valuable than raw speed.
So you’re telling me that jalopnik, the kings of the “everything should have a manual”, blew the clutch? Color me shocked.
My Dad texted me and asked how my weekend racing KeMons in CMP went…
“Well we had fun…
The engine blew up 2 laps into my shift. Spectacular failure, the #4 connecting rod was bent into a fishing hook shape, and the rest of the piston was in the oil pan.
One of our teammates went home and got his Mercedes and we drove that Sunday. It was a good time with good friends. I will see them all again this weekend in New Jersey.”
Yeah what might have been.
What might have been was you having a soul sucking job in that same cubicle and spending your weekends cheering some collection of narsassist in the sporting challenge de jour being marketed to you but a company that wants you imobile on your sofa, consuming.
Instead, you did something. Yeah, it blew up. So what? You hung with your brother and your buddies. You lovingly mocked another auto journo and you raced.
In the end, everyone came home with all their limbs and a great story. Soon you will do it again.
These are our windmills Jack, and I will keep tilting at them until they go down, or I do
YOU’RE MAKING IT VERY DIFFICULT TO FEEL SORRY FOR MYSELF YOU KNOW