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 to race. It revved freely to 8000 rpm, and was light and well-balanced. It was the perfect size, low-slung and silver.

If it were mine I’d rip out the interior and fabricate new everything in aluminum, just so it would feel 100 percent like a racecar. I’d bolt on a big wing so it would look more like one. Its owner, Mike Helton, did allow me to put the graphics “Fast Guys, Rich Guys and Idiots” on the long hood. That’s the title of my self-proclaimed rollicking racing memoir, in which I drove a 1982 NASCAR Oldsmobile that the legendary Dale Earnhardt once drove.

But back to the Bimmer, which I raced in an SCCA race at Portland International Raceway later that summer. There were a lot of hot Porsche Turbos in the field, as well as a rocket-fast Camaro with tons of money in it. Helton and I were both really pleased with the weekend, fifth overall in the main event. The gearbox overheated, and twice it wouldn’t downshift into third, costing one position to a Porsche, so a transmission oil cooler was added for the next race.

Later Doug Mill raced it in the rain, at PIR. They threw the rain tires on at the last minute, so he had to start from the pits, but still drove to 8^th overall.

In October, Helton, Mill and I teamed to drive the MCoupe in the 4-hour race at Pacific Raceways near Seattle. Our battle cry was “Running 190!” because that’s how many years the three of us have been living, if not always running or battling.

Not unexpectedly, it rained during the race. Mill drove the first 40 laps, about 80 minutes in a steady drizzle, turning the car over to me in fourth place, although the stop dropped us to 14^th. I tried to find a zone, but kept getting interrupted by orders for flowers and questions about fruit bowls. Our radio was picking up the frequency of a banquet planner at a nearby hotel.

The rain came and went a couple of times during my first 60 minutes, and then it stopped and a dry line began to form. We were running the same Hoosier rain tires that Mill had used at Portland, and I knew their miles were numbered, so I started looking for puddles to cool them. The car was beginning to understeer and resist reaching the apexes. I radioed to crew chief Ron Kiel that it would be a tough call, whether or not to put on dry tires for Helton’s finishing stint in the car.

photo by Steve Alvine

It took 30 laps for me to move back up to fourth place, by passing a Porsche 911. I moved into third place by passing a fast BMW 325i on the 86^th lap, just two laps before we had to pit for fuel a second time. Having a small tank, the MCoupe could run just 90 minutes, meaning it needed an extra pit stop. Worse, each stop cost two laps, because the hot pits were in the parking lot, requiring a long drive at 15 mph.

Helton left the pits in fourth place, and struggled on deteriorating tires for the final 37 laps. “The handling got worse and worse and worse,” he said. “I figured I better back off before I wreck myself and somebody else.’’

At the finish, the MCoupe’s right front rain tire was bald and the left front laughably cupped. We finished seventh overall, third in class. The BMW 325i that I had passed at the end of my stint ended up finishing second overall.

But Mike Helton was happy because his other car, the trusty RTG Motorsports BMW M3 driven by Pat Boyle and Wes Tipton, won the race overall. They had dared to start the race on intermediate tires, which were slippery in the rain but lasted the whole 4 hours.

photo by Steve Alvine

We still looked good, in the sweet silver MCoupe. But for lack of larger fuel cell in the coupe, RTG Motorsports might have scored a one-two sweep. Well, a fuel cell and one less driver (though don’t ask me which one). And a bit more rain.

end

Sam Moses

Previous Blogs:

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...

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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...

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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...

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