|
||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Fact 1, Fiction 02008-07-28 18:45:17 I’ll be doing a couple more blogs from the Mazda Grand Prix of Portland, including a photo gallery as soon as I get the pics, but I should get this blog out of the way first. The Dueling Authors thing, with Garth Stein. I won.
 I was pretty sure I had him, two days before practice began, when he said in an email, “Publicity is what it’s all about.”
Sorry Garth, racing is what it’s all about. You’ve written a wonderful book that deserves to be the bestseller that it is, titled The Art of Racing in the Rain, but you did it without being a racer. Doing some racing is not the same as being a racer. You touched on the art of racing in your book, but you’re a novelist. You didn’t live it.
In my nonfiction book, Fast Guys, Rich Guys, and Idiots, I lived it.
MAZDASPEED Motorsports billed our duel at Portland International Raceway on Sunday as "Fact vs. Fiction," and now we see why fact wins. You made being a racer up, while I actually am one. I've been racing since you were one year old.
 I don't want this blog to sound mean-spirited, but Garth, you did do a lot of big talking, even ridiculing, for example telling me to stay home to save myself the embarrassment of being beaten by a novelist.
So Garth, please put these words of yours on the barbecue grille, because you’re about to eat them: “Stick to mountain climbing, Sam. Leave the car racing to me.”
But you taught me an expression, at least. I had never heard the word DFL, until you used it. I have no experience with the concept. Sure enough, that’s where you finished: Dead bleeping last.
Sorry for twisting the knife now, there's truly no meanness in my heart, but these too are your words: “I can envision myself not simply beating Sam, but winning the race outright.”
You must have been looking in the mirror when you were envisioning, and got it totally backward.
When I got crashed into the wall on the backstraight at more than 100 miles per hour in the first practice session on Thursday, you chortled a bit, didn't you. Never fazed me. We’re all racers on Team MER. My ace crew pounded out the fenders and more or less straightened the wheels for the afternoon session. They chased the balance and handling all the way to the starting line of the race Sunday, and it still wasn’t right because the frame was tweaked. After qualifying, Jason Saini, last year’s MX-5 Cup champion and our Team MER leader, ran some laps in my car—named Silver Bullet, btw—and drove into three or four handling and braking flaws. "A.J. Foyt himself couldn't get under 1:30 with that car," I told him he said.
While you were up nights tending to your book sales, chatting with your online fans, answering all the wrong questions and letting your focus be led astray, I was thinking about how to go faster. Visualizing. My focus on the race began on Wednesday morning when I left my children sleeping at 4 a.m., to drive three-and-a-half hours to Pacific Raceways, just to get three short track sessions in a street MX-5 with the Alfa Romeo Owners Club; unlike you, I had never raced a Mazda Miata.
I confess, my setting us up to share those wheels during the week was calculated. For me to have the MX-5 roadster that Wednesday, and hand it over to you on Thursday to run around town with frazzled brakes and tires and numbers on the windshield. As Richard Petty used to say about cheating, “Jes’ tryin’ to get an edge.”
Oh, I made my own errors in the race, to run 19th. But we both know how strong that field was; it was an SCCA Pro race, after all—and weren’t all those hot young drivers exciting and impressive?! Just as I came out of the dust after my second costly incident, after I’d run off the track on the outside of turn 7, the four leaders freight-trained past me on the backstraight.
Now here’s what it’s really all about, for a racer: I hung onto them for almost two laps. My moments. Eric Foss, my great Team MER coach, was fourth in line (he would finish third and maintain his points lead in the Playboy MX-5 Cup series), and he said he looked in his mirror a lap after they passed, and was amazed and excited to see me there, hanging it out in the Festival Chicane right behind him.
“This is fun!” I radioed to my crew chief and old racing buddy Ronnie Swyers, as I drafted the four leaders up the front straight the next time around.
“What did you say?” he asked.
I pressed the button on the steering wheel with my right thumb again, just before the upshift to fifth gear, and shouted, “Fun! Fun! Fun!”
I think that lap must have been the one that was my best, a 1:29.8, which, if my arithmetic is correct here, would be exactly 2 seconds faster than your best lap of 1:31.8.
I would never say, “Leave the car racing to me, Garth.” I’d love to see you out there. But if you want to run with the racers, first you need to learn the art of racing.
These are the facts. If you feel nailed by the truth, again, I'm sorry, but please remember that it's what a nonfiction writer does. And in the end, on the track, facts are what it’s all about.
 Photos by Jeff Zurschmeide, Justin Coffey and Juha Lievonen
Sam Moses Previous Blogs: Pre-race thoughts, Playboy MX-5 Cup 2008-07-27 06:57:28 I’m writing this at 6 a.m. on the Sunday morning of the race, I think in order to clear my mind. In the grand scheme of things, whatever happens today will be insignificant. People will be entertained for a... Read More 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... Read More Fast Guys, Rich Guys, and Idiots: The Underdog 2008-07-17 04:21:34 If you haven't read the previous blog, here's the setup: Garth Stein, author of the bestselling "The Art of Racing in the Rain," is shooting off his fertile imagination, saying he'll blow me into the weeds at the upcoming race on... Read More Fast Guys, Rich Guys, and Idiots Big Story! 2008-07-15 13:57:08 FACT VS FICTION ON THE RACE TRACK - It will be Novelist vs Motorsports Writer at the Portland Mazda MX-5 Cup Race - July 14, 2008 (Irvine, Calif.) – The... Read More Running 190 2007-10-20 13:32:43 I first drove the RTG Motorsports BMW MCoupe for 20 minutes one hot day last summer, at Pacific Raceways. It was about the sweetest racecar I’ve ever driven—there have been a few faster and some sexier, but none so sweet. It felt born... Read More First and Last Time as an Idiot 2007-10-10 12:50:41 University of Nebraska Press Blog October 1, 2007 Once, when I was doing a book signing for the original “Fast Guys, Rich Guys and Idiots” some 20 years ago, a young woman asked me if the book was about her... Read More Fast Guys, Rich Guys, and Idiots Take Off 2007-09-10 12:01:19 Getting a head start on the September 7 paperback publication of his classic racing memoir, Fast Guys, Rich Guys, and Idiots, Sam Moses raced to 5th overall in a field of 40 powerful sports cars at the SCCA regional event at... Read More University of Nebraska Press Releases Fast Guys, Rich Guys, and Idiots 2007-09-07 11:54:42 Fast Guys, Rich Guys, and Idiots A Racing Odyssey on the Border of Obsession By Sam Moses With a new introduction by the author Sam Moses, a motorsports writer for Sports Illustrated, was assigned to... Read More Back to Blog list |
|||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Eric Foss, championship points leader, Team MER
| HOME | AT ALL COSTS | FAST GUYS RICH GUYS AND IDIOTS | BANDIT BLOG | ROAD TEST BLOG | SENOR MADRE | RIVER WITHOUT A CAUSE | SAM MOSES BIO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Copyright 2008 Sam Moses | |||||||