Day One: The Crash

2008-07-24 09:20:49

Thursday, July 24.

Mazda Grand Prix of Portland.

Playboy MX-5 Cup.

MAZDASPEED Motorsports ride, with Team MER out of Fort Worth, Texas, the MX-5 Cup champions in 2006 and 2007

It was just a test session, not even official practice yet. My first time in the car. I’m sailing down the bending backstraight at maybe 105 mph, a concrete wall to my right. A guy in a bright yellow MX-5 pops out of my draft and begins to pass me on the left, a couple feet from my door. No problem, I saw him coming. He gets about three-fourths of a car length ahead, and swerves to the right, clipping my left front fender with his right rear.

I swear to God, my immediate thought was: Why does this guy hate me so much that he’s trying to crash me into the wall? And doesn't he know he's doomed, trying to do it like that?

I lifted the throttle and just tried to keep the car straight, which I pretty much did, as the yellow car inevitably rotated 90 degrees, speared by my front bumper, and hit the wall with its nose. The right side of my beautiful Silver Bullet began scraping against the wall, as our two cars slid down the backstraight stuck together like that for more than 500 feet, until the track turned to the left and we ended up in the dry grass. I hope the grass doesn’t catch fire, I thought.

The guy waved in disgust, like he was sending me sign language that somehow this fiasco was my fault. I’m thinking he’s loony.

They wave the red flag, stopping the session. First time I’ve ever gotten a red flag on account of my own incident, I thought when I saw it there in my face.

My car started right up, thank heavens, because coming back on the hook would have added insult to injury. I chugged at about 20 mph the short distance back to the pits, with Bullet’s bashed fenders rubbing against the tires.

The guy came up to me later. “I was just setting up for the turn,” he said. In the middle of the backstraight? Deborah Loth, my teammate who drives Black Mamba, explained that some people just lack that sense, the ability to judge distance related to speed. Even racedrivers, I guess.

I hardly even felt bad about it. More of a nuisance than anything else, with my Team MER crew having to fix the car. Marc, Ronnie, Darin, Bryan, Wally, Chris, Myron. And they had four other Team MER cars to work on, all of them faster than me. When the slowest among five drivers on the team uses up all of the time, it’s not good. But I’ve never felt more innocent. We were all victimized.

Bless their deep-in-the-heart-of-Texas hearts, they fixed the car in two hours, and I was able to run the afternoon session. The chassis balance was knocked askew, but no matter; I just needed seat time, not perfect cornering.

Team MER was just beginning to show its stuff. Thursday evening I was feeling terrific, blown away by the talent, chemistry and hard work of the dozen or so people on Shannon McMaster’s Team MER.

Sam Moses

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