…but why racing?

Ineluctable – ĭn″ĭ-lŭk′tə-bəl

  1. not to be resisted
  2. impossible to avoid or evade
  3. inevitable
  4. the manner in which this driver invariably submitted to motor racing’s magnetism

If your own morbid curiosity (or your appetite for my potentially delectable future schadenfreude) brought you back to this isolated slice of the world wide web, I have to assume your curiosity is focused on why I would subject myself to such potential and very public embarrassment.

You must have wandered back here with one burning question. “Why, callow Simcadet, do you even wish to go racing?”

I wish there was a way to answer that question with a single succinct reason, but there are too many to discuss at once. Today I thought I’d simply pen an entry based on one reason, and the more major reason in about ten posts from now – your cue to subscribe if your curiosity is overpowering.

Even now accelerating towards mid-life, I want to go racing because…well for one, the universe has seemingly never allowed me to forget about doing so! That is, despite for the majority of my life and even much the case at present, I have not been in a position to do so. So strong was the call towards road racing circuits that I can literally sit here and tell you about when the Motor Racing contagion first clung to me and begrimed my imagination, before the universe subsequently steered my attention towards it whenever it could. It’s a bit like that old girlfriend it didn’t work out with but you never stopped loving. In my case Motor Racing is a bit like her. Much like you and that girlfriend, I have never had a reason to believe she loved me back – yet I’ve never managed to forget her!

Way, way back when I was just a smashing little guy aged four years, I had the opportunity to visit Japan. There, manifested in the land of the rising sun, a life-long adulation for being the fastest in a circle began. I know, I know….you’re thinking it isn’t possible for me to remember anything vividly from so long ago. You’re wrong, as there were a number of experiences I remember well:

1.) I remember flying on that plane – and I do mean flyin’ – as in, up and down the aisle of that airplane for hours until I had no energy left. Those poor, poor fellow passengers. If any of you are out there reading this now, I am so very sorry. I was just a little excited. I absolutely took a thumping for it after landing.

2.) Tokyo was the site of my very first serious allergic reaction! I devoured a healthy serving of seafood and then, promptly and vigorously, projectile vomited right there in the middle of the restaurant. A thorough and rather unforgettable thrashing by my father ensued immediately – also in the middle of the restaurant.

3.) I experienced my first real taste and sight of Motorsport, even though I could barely open one of my eyes from the bruising suffered as a result of events in point two above. I still think about those days often and the magnetism I feel today in my thirties towards racing remains unvaried.

I showed such interest in racing that my dear mother, eager to separate me from my father who had plans to exclusively party on this trip, took me along on what seemed at the time to be a dizzying commuting combination of train and bus in order to see the race cars!

I will never forget that noise in my ears, the tingle in my spine, the speed at which the race cars flew by and their byproduct rumble at my feet. The exhilaration I felt seeing cars brake late and throttling out of corners after crashing seemed so inevitable, it all made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I feel bad thinking about it now, as I still recall talking my poor mother’s ears off the rest of the trip. In my little four year old mind, the rest of that trip could get f*cked! When Racecar?!

I proceeded to run my mouth incessantly about how much I loved it for the next year and a half. My father, seemingly irritated about it finally took me to some hole in the wall construction company that for some reason also built race karts. I was over the moon! I couldn’t believe my luck. I don’t think I slept a wink that Friday night, after all I might have a chance to sit in the kart, I thought. When we got there I remember throwing myself through the front door at full speed and seeing a very dirty kart in the back area. My father asked a few basic questions while I was admiring the race kart then swiftly proceeded to berate me in front of the owner about the costs of karting, and told me to forget about it unless I wanted my family to starve, and continued that harsh denigration accompanied by physical persuasion all the way home. I remember the confusion (and likely a concussion) in my head setting in when he started in on me; “were we really not there to see the karts?” I’ll surely always remember the sinking feeling of realization that racing would never, ever happen due to finances..

Sometime later the incredible Ayrton Senna died in a crash at Imola. I was still just a young lad but the way he was mourned universally, specifically over the next 24 hours, was not lost on me. He was not simply reiterated over and over as the greatest driver of all time, but he was revered all over the world. The way more than three million of his countrymen lined the streets a few days on during his nationally televised funeral left me in awe. I couldn’t believe he was gone, but I was shocked at how important he was to so many. Could racing drivers really be so pivotal?

Some years later I ended up seeing a movie called Super Speedway in an empty theatre. I kept looking around at the seats where people would have sat with an expression of, “are you seeing this? Unreal!” I was astounded by the amount of work involved in constructing a then Indy car. Seeing the process of clay model to carbon tub, wind-tunnel through to test-ready machine was super fascinating; the fact it accumulated to nothing without the driver and his input made a very strong impression on me. Maybe racing drivers were important in some small way. The sounds and camera work during that test footage with Andretti’s senior and junior were gripping, and it all served to further ignite my adoration of motor racing. Upon leaving, the cruel universe began to bake reality back into me, reminding me that I was simply a spectator. I retained a love of racing but I knew I had no opportunity to even start.

In the years after I fostered quite a few other sporting interests, some which I developed appreciable passion for. Racing was never that far from my thoughts but I most definitely did my best at filling that void. Chasing girls and trying to reinvent myself as a bit of a star athlete seemed suitable distractions for a man of culture after all. Then, at just around the age I might have actually been able to move on…

I just had to see that F&^$*NG movie. You know the one.

In April one year I once again found myself in a mostly empty theatre – this time to catch Dana Brown’s Dust to Glory. Mr. Brown, if you ever stumble onto this blog, I have always loved your work. Step into Liquid was jaw dropping!

It was really engaging to watch Dust to Glory at an impressionable time in life, but simultaneously a bit painful. In that sparsely populated theater it dawned on me that my hunger to race wasn’t so dormant. No, it was very much still lurking- in fact it was starting to growl from deep inside. I was brought up to speed with the spending levels involved in racing at the time and learning of multi-million dollar single-race budgets was dumbfounding. On the other hand, it might have also been my first exposure to “grassroots” racing, as at the Baja 1000 this is undertaken by the smaller teams in the lower categories. Wait, I thought…could there actually be a way for me to do something like this? I am really grateful Dana Brown enthusiastically covered this side of the event as well, because it seemed to light a bit of a spark.

Like a true brainlet I came away from that showing with a solution – I’d satisfy my desires by riding motorcycles! Racing on two wheels must be cheaper, after all! Right? Well, I didn’t get that far as while it lasted for years, a few accidents took me out. The last of which was quite bad and led to a natural decline in riding over the next few years, which correlated with an increasing desire to go racing again. The hunger didn’t go seemingly dormant this time. I could hear it. Flames rampaging from deep inside.

Why?

It’s because something in Dust to Glory changed me. Maybe it was Falling From the Sky playing through the speakers, integrating euphoniously with the roaring of those mega-budget trophy truck engines as they launched off the line, the way their suspensions flexed taking corners at high throttle. Or maybe it was the rally-esque cockpit view of the trophy truck slicing its way through the preliminary portion of that year’s course, biblically parting the spectators like the Red Sea..maybe it was all of it, but if I had to put it down to just one thing..

It was the way Alan Pflueger described what racing at the Baja 1000 in a Trophy Truck was like.

“..you can’t really describe it, you’ve got to experience it…It’s a controlled explosion it’s like trying to hold a piece of dynamite and keep the explosion in your hand.” That statement, his enthusiasm, the way he smiled from ear to ear when he said it, that stayed with me for years afterward; I thought of it often. I knew I couldn’t become a handsome Hawaiian but maybe, just maybe, I could chase that dynamite. Maybe I too could catch it, and try my hand at containing the explosion.

Fast forward the better part of a decade and for various reasons I began a deep introspection with respect to my baseline level of happiness. It all kept leading to the same question – Why wasn’t I that happy? Like that old girlfriend coming around again, my mind kept lapping back to these few key impressionable moments.

The time had come. It was time to chase that dynamite.

Now hit that subscribe button – Let’s chase it together.

3 replies on “…but why racing?”

    1. Really appreciate your kind message.

      What an occasion, the very first public comment here. No more is this blog a diminutive hermitage.

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