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| Kammann. (Wiki.) |
by Ian Cooper
Racing has always fascinated me. I was going around
all the used car lots, pressing my nose to a lot of glass and checking out a
lot of sheet metal, and I was barely fourteen or fifteen. Back then there were
some cool cars in town. One of the local shop teachers used to park a silver Jaguar XKE,
the V-12 coupe version, right beside the school and I always took a good look
at it going by.
There were a few cars hidden away in barns and
garages that I never knew about, but I knew where every cool car in town sort
of lived or parked. My first car cost $50.00, a 1969 Austin Mini
that I yanked out of a back lot on the end of a rope, my old man towing it home
in his old Volvo.
By the time we were done, I’d gone through three Minis. My old man drove about
four Volvos over thirty years, ending a couple of years before he passed on. We
had to take his driver’s license away from him because he just wasn’t safe
any more.
Racing is serious business,
where high technology and research drives names and brands into the winner’s
circle. Driving is one of the few things I ever thought I did well. In this
Toyota Le Mans video, there are no straw-chewing cowboys. These are scientists
and yes, they hope to sell cars based on their racing success.
But even just
being there brings its own prestige.
There is a moment when the car becomes a part of you
and you a part of it, and you are no longer man and machine, but one with the machine. It becomes an
extension of your body. By having hands on the wheel, feet on the pedals, your
ass strapped in tight, you have extended your perceptions.
You hardly need to look at the instruments. You
don’t really need to look at the speedometer at the end of the straight because
you can feel it and hear it and see it and even taste and smell it. It's scary as shit if you do look at the speedometer. Death is inches away and you know that very well. It rumbles
through your guts and tugs on your inner
ears when you pull gee forces in a banked turn, go over the top of a sharp rise
or slam down into a valley and then begin pulling out, like an airplane in a
swoop and dive attack. The only thing that matters is the road ahead and what
lies beyond.
You know exactly how fast you can accelerate,
because you are doing it. There is a kind of intensity in that moment that
other athletes will recognize by the description.
It is a kind of focus, a Zen-like moment when nothing else matters.
It is doing your own thing in the ultimate sense of
the word. Hell, I know it’s an old piss-pot, and I know some half-decent guy in
a car that is only slightly better could and should be able to go through the
turn or corner faster than I just did. That’s not the point. Maybe the point is
that it’s the only such exercise that I get, the only real physical adventure
that I can sort of afford or allow myself.
It is the pursuit of something intangible. The
adrenalin probably doesn’t hurt either. It is the feeling of having risked
something, and getting away with it. Maybe that’s it, but I think it is
addictive too.
It’s strange, I even feel the same way when I’m
riding my bicycle and thing are going well—not too much pain and the breathing
is good and I feel good and it is a machine after all. I’m just the one making
the power, another level of management I suppose. You have to manage your mind
and your body or it isn’t going to work. There are parallels with other aspects
of life.
In every act there is meaning. I really believe
that.
I don’t even know where the dream started, possibly
because of my buddy Bob with his motocross racing
magazines—he was into motocross pretty strong there for a while. He, at least,
actually went out and did something about it, but then he got married and the
kids started popping out. I guess he did the right thing.
He was no longer a
spoiled young guy with a bit too much money but a father now, and so he had to
quit.
That is the way of all dreams, isn’t it? Reality
sets in at some point. Even I had to grow up at some point.
No, it’s true. I
settled for something less—people often do.
When I was a young lad I wanted so badly to go to this Jim Russell
racing school. Back then it was only $1,400.00, but now it’s more like
$4,300.00 for the introductory three-day course. The cars have a six-foot four
height limit, so that kind of lets me off the hook! But honestly, I’d have to
be nuts to even dream of it. At my age, maybe someday…I might do it as some
kind of a bucket list thing. The trouble is that I would probably still want to
go fast and win. Everyone has an ego, don’t they? And it would probably just
cause friction with the younger and more professional aspirants. The real winners usually started pretty young.
Those opportunities come to so few...
Man, would them young people ever like to beat me! (‘Cause if you
can’t, you’re pretty lame, right?)
Enough said, ladies and gentlemen.
What I would like is a free photo from inside the
car, (almost any car) doing about a hundred and eighty miles an hour, Mulsanne
Straight, Le Mans, with a couple of cars ahead in the picture. Road and Track
used to have some good pictures and articles and I subscribed to the magazine
for a few years there.
END
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