"The Loooong Race," Pilote Gets His Alfa Groove Back (2 of 2)

I arrived at Blackhawk around lunchtime with the understanding that the vintage race would be in the afternoon.  It was the first event.  The second race was for open wheel cars and the third race was for Miatas.  The big-bore cars would run last.  As all races ran for 50 minutes, I decided to bail early, before the Spec. Miata carnage was over at 4:00, having seen only the vintage race.  Which turned out to be excellent, for an Alfiste like me, as described below.  It was a great End Of Season Bash, a fond memory for the cabin fever days ahead.

Gridding up: the MGB is not a large car, so this driver is sitting on the floor or he has a weight advantage over some of
his competitors.  The lines of the B seemed a leap forward over the A when it was introduced, and they still appeal.

Gridding up: this Porsche 356 C had no trouble getting and staying ahead of my beloved Alfas, a reversal the old
D Production days in the SCCA.  The Triumph TR-4 in the background was not highly placed.

Gridding up: the race-within-the-race was between these two Alfa GTA/GTV's.  Foreground: Barbara Nevoral
"represents" for the Vintage Sports Car Drivers Association.  Background: John Saccameno does likewise for
my own North Suburban Sports Car Club.

In the race, this 3-series Bimmer had no trouble running off and hiding from the rest of the field.  Including a B Sedan
Mustang, which tried to outbrake him into Turn 1 early in the race: cloud of smoke, after which he drifted rearward.
This picture shows the new (to me, anyway) 200-foot runoff area at the end of the front straight.  It used to be that,
if you outbraked yourself into Turn 1, you wound up in boggy, high, scrub brush.  Blackhawk put in some landfill
and planted it with grass.  One of many improvements by the new owners over the past few years.

Behind the Bimmer, the Porsche ran his own race: never threatened or threatening, although he (and everyone) had
plenty of lapped traffic to deal with.  It was a nice, full, field for an end-of-year event.

Barbara and John had to drive hard to get around this MGB, which then faded.  John gradually closed the gap to Barb,
from 10 car-lengths down to 5, with apparently better luck in traffic.  They swam like sharks through the fishes, even
if some of the fishes were snails, being lapped.  From where I stood, at Turn 1, they drove fast and mistake-free for
50 minutes.  Turn 1 is not easy to drive.  You must get down 1 or 2 gears for a late apex, and you must hold the car
tight on exit to set up for the best entry into Turns 2-3.  As I said to John after the race, "Who needs passing to
enjoy a great race?"  As John said to me, "Barb kicked my ass this time."

Above and below: afterglow.  Barbara and John were paddocked together and spent a half-hour reliving the race.  They
had close-up views of a lot of... stuff... while driving hard in their own mistake-free race.  Barbara is behind her car,
John is sitting in the doorway of his trailer.  The styling of Bertone's Alfa coupes, especially the GTA/GTV, pulls
my chain like few other contemporaries.  Great looking (and driving) cars!

Above and below: a nod to the fastest Porsche 356 I've seen in many a day.  Mr. Rick Gurolnick has built himself
quite a ride, and knows how to drive it.  The "side pipe" is probably for the benefit of trackside decibel meters;
most 356's run "stinger" exhausts.  As for styling... I've never considered the "bathtub" looks of the 356 as
anything but ugly.  Butzi's sainted 911 is an entirely different matter, as regular readers know.

"The Loooong Race," Ambience Post (1 of 2)

"The Looong Race" is always the last event of my club's season, always at Blackhawk Farms, at the end of October.  The point of it is that drivers get 45 minutes or more of seat time, not the usual half hour.

Normally the weather is dependably crummy: temperatures in the 30's or 40's, with horizontal precipitation.  So I never go.  This year, temperatures were in the high 60's with a cloudless sky and a light breeze from the southwest.  So I went, and took a jacket. It wasn't needed.

While Blackhawk may not be as challenging as, say, Autobahn Country Club's South Loop, its autumn ambience is much better.  It has a nice mix of Maples, Oaks, and Evergreens.  It has a decent basic restaurant and good spectator sight-lines.  This ambience post includes two Seldom Seens at Midwest Council events.

Vintage racers chase each other through Turn 2 toward the Corner Station at Turn 3.  Not typical late-October weather.

OK, this is just a guess, but I'm thinking there isn't much to do in Wind Lake but eat, party, and bat fish.  So you
cheeseheads from Wind Lake have a standing invitation to come down any time for an Asian Carp fish-batting
party on the Illinois River.  We will show you a good time: world class fish batting.  (See the YouTube vids.)

The Pilote-Approved Corner Worker's car.  No, silly, the Civic Si.  Turn 6 at Blackhawk Farms.

My camera, and iPhoto's editing tools, normally produce beautiful pictures with spot-on color.  But I cannot get this
one to reproduce the absolutely gorgeous highly-oxegenated-blood tone of Ferrari's red.  It's not tomato, and it has
no purple/blue tones in it, like this pic.  I have sneered at the styling of the nose of the Modena series of Ferraris.
But there's not much to complain about from the side and rear.

Another thing seldom-seen at Midwest Council events: a real-deal Porsche GT 3.  I have no idea what class he ran in,
and didn't stick around to see the "big bore" race at the end of the day.  But it's a safe bet that he won.

First In-Person Look: 2015 Mustang

Above: 2015 Mustang suspension.  In front, "nothing to see here, folks, move along," except that a strut tower K-brace
is standard on the 2.3 liter four-cylinder turbo, GT Performance Package, and all convertibles.  In back, the geometry
reminds me of my own Honda Civic Si and some other designs.  Ford claims that it reduces nose-dive and squat in
braking and acceleration.  The hub carriers and lower links are aluminum, reducing unsprung weight.

Below: You get a bigger (stiffer) rear bar on the four-cylinder turbo Performance Package and the GT coupe, and a
still bigger one on the GT Track Package.  Probably the biggest rear bar and its brackets could be bought over the
parts counter and bolted into the turbo four: dial out some understeer!

You can't see much of the new i.r.s., and how its geometry works, even if you lie down on the showroom floor and
embarrass your salesman (if not yourself).

The new Mustang with independent rear suspension looks to be a very nice car, and an improvement on the S-197 in both handling and looks.  (That is, over the 2010-2014 car; I still prefer the looks of the 2005-2009 "retro" S-197.)  But it's still big, and heavy: a pony car, not a sports car.  And I got a sticker shock.  My dealer's 4-cylinder turbo, not heavily-optioned, has an MSRP of $34K.  His V-8 GT, which has a $400 paint job, 19-inch wheels, a rear-view camera, and navigation, has an MSRP of $41K.  The latter is about 18% more than the MSRP for my lightly-optioned 2008 V-8 GT convertible.

So I won't be spending my children's inheritance for improved handling.  But if I were, the turbo four coupe with light aftermarket wheels, summer-only tires, and the biggest rear stabilizer bar would intrigue me as a wannabe Tail Of The Dragon slayer.  I was shown some text in in-house promotion materials to the effect that Ford has altered the steering geometry to improve feel.  Hmmmm...  Lack of steering feel has been a complaint of mine about Ford products (including my own Mustang) for decades.  The 2.0 liter turbo four in Hotshoe's Focus ST is powerful with good driveability, and a similar engine over the front wheels of the new Mustang removes maybe 200 lbs. of weight where it needs it the most.

Above and below: the 2.3 liter turbo version.  The 2015 car remains way too "Origami" for my taste, with creases all
over the place.  It doesn't have the clean, retro, lines of the 2005-2009 car, but it's better than the 2010-2014 car.
One exception is the "true fastback" roof line and quarter window, which work quite well.

Above and below: the 5.0 V-8 GT on my dealer's showroom floor.  From the front and rear, the 2015 Mustang is a
Cookie Monster: better than the 2010-2014 S-197, but not as delicious as my own "retro" 2008 car.  Or
Watchtower's 2009 Bullitt--the best-looking modern Mustang of them all.

Fun With A Search Term

Stirling Moss gives Phil Hill a Lap of Honor at the Goodwood Revival.

This post title was one I gave up over a year ago because the queries just weren't no fun no more.  A curse or blessing of this blog is that people now get to it with serious queries.  May they depart more satisfied than when they arrived.  But this query is too much fun to pass up: "Was Phil Hill as fast as Sterling [sic] Moss?"

The short answer is no.

But then Phil was World Champion in 1961 and Stirling famously never was, although he won far more Grands Prix.  Stirling won sports car races on difficult circuits like the Nurburgring.  Then there was his legendary Mille Miglia win in 1955.  Phil didn't win as much on hard circuits and didn't enter the Mille Miglia.  Phil won other major endurance races, including LeMans three times.  Stirling didn't.  Phil won his last major race (Brands Hatch, in a Chaparral), and never had a serious accident.  Stirling had two, including one that ended his career.  Do you suppose they could have had a lively discussion about the relative merits of their driving talent?

At least Phil and Stirling were contemporaries.  So this query makes more sense than those bench-racing-with-beer questions like "Who was better, Juan Fangio or Michael Schumacher?"

(Slightly) Off-Topic: 2120 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago

2120 S. Michigan is now a privately-owned blues museum (picture taken in 2008).

I'm re-reading Nadine Cohodas's excellent Turning Blues Into Gold: The Chess Brothers And The Legendary Chess Records.  The amount of great R&B that came out of 2120 still astonishes me:
Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf, Chuck Berry, Etta James, and more.  The Rolling Stones recorded a few tracks at 2120 in 1964, as a kind of tribute to their own heros.  As well they should have.

2120 was fairly luxurious digs for an independent label.  Chess had formerly been in a storefront at 4858 South Cottage Grove.  The earlier blues hits by Muddy, Walter, and Wolf were recorded at Universal Studios.  At 2120 the business offices and inventory were downstairs; the recording studio was upstairs.  Although it was long and narrow, not an ideal shape, it was refurbished as a sound-proof studio and upgraded at least once.  The control room overlooked the street through the large windows seen above.

I've made my own pilgrimage to 2120.  For me, the building is a memorial to the idea that extraordinary things can be done in the most ordinary surroundings.  And I've already found some obscure Chess singles on iTunes.  After finishing the book this time, I'm gonna use the index to ransack iTunes for a new road mix.

Lola T 70 In-Car From The Goodwood Revival (2014)

Goodwood: oddly, in-car camera footage often fails to show elevation changes and off-camber bends as dramatically
difficult as they are in fact.  For example, Madgwick is off-camber on the outside, the hill in St. Mary's changes the
ideal line, and Lavant and Woodcote have multiple apexes.  Harder to drive than it looks.

A year ago I posted a link to Kenny Brack's rain race in a Ford GT 40 at the 2013 Revival--an awesome sideways drive in which I, at least, didn't doubt his car control.  Here's a link to Lola T-70 in the dry that had me on the edge of my seat.  The video is in HD.  It runs 26 minutes; visibility is decreased from the middle onwards by bug splats and a low sun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9wshPZp9Co

I've seen a few Can-Am car in-car videos, and am impressed with how hard these cars are to control.  I had the same feeling at the only Can-Am race I saw "live," at Mid-Ohio in 1971.  Even well into the aero era, it was obvious that the McLaren M8F and the Lola T 260 were a handful for world-class drivers like Denny Hulme, Peter Revson, and Jackie Stewart.  The driving technique appeared to be to get the car slowed, tip-toe around the bend, get it straightened out, bury the throttle, and hang on.  Repeat.

In the hands of mere mortals, T 70's and other early Can-Am cars seem to be even more of a... handful.
Watch the steering wheel in the vid.  The driver has to really tippy-toe until the tires warm up.  There's a lot of counter-steering going on.  He has "moments," often in traffic, at about 7, 10, and 14 minutes. And a big one at 16 minutes.  It appears that even a good driver can't really stay ahead of an early Can-Am car.  He has to hope to be able to catch the car when it begins to get out from under him, which it will.

Above and below: two views of the Lola T 70 in typical Can-Am specification.  Neither car is the one in the video, but all
three are similar.  In the mid-'60's, at the dawn of the aero era, the T 70 gave Chaparral and McLaren  all they could
handle in the "unlimited" Can-Am series (and won a championship).  The T 70 also did well in British national
races and was a contender in FIA races, with small-block V-8's.  But it was obsoleted when rear wings and a
more scientific approach to front aerodynamics came to Can-Am.

Brave New World

I've ranted about self-driving cars before, and so will here just paraphrase some expert I happened to see on C-SPAN:

"As best I can forecast, dual-control cars [computer-operated but human over-rideable] will be on roads by 2020.  Computer-controlled cars that drivers cannot over-ride will be on roads by 2030.  By 2040, human-driven cars will be banned from certain roads because they are too dangerous."

He was not lamenting the passing of "driver-driven" cars.  Nobody on the panel was.  From what I could tell (channel-surfing to and away from the broadcast), the panel was composed of computer tech/"smart grid" experts, transportation safety experts (including air and rail), and insurance industry people.  Google and several car companies have already invested heavily in driverless car technology, and I believe that California and a couple of other states have now granted waivers for "beta" testing on designated public roads.

The prevailing hypothesis on the expert panel seemed to be "How and when can we make highways operate like the air traffic control system?"  The main barrier to computer-controlled cars appears to be electronic infrastructure that supports "smart highways."  The prevailing opinion seemed to be "Why wouldn't you want to use your time more productively and safely than in actually driving a car?"

And maybe computer-controlled cars do make more sense in a wired world.  At best, the number of Americans who care about cars and driving skillfully is 10% of the population.  We few, we happy few, we band of brothers, can go fish.  Figuratively if not literally.