posted 07-18-2007 04:14 PM               

Open Road Racing falls under the category of "What am I Doing?????" and then, "WOW! We did it, and we're still ALIVE!!!!"

There are probably other events with a higher fatality rate, like maybe the Pikes Peak Hill Climb where one miscalculation sends you flying off into oblivion with no guardrails, hundreds of feet above the valley floor. This event must take a close second! This is where the highway patrol sections off a stretch of regular rural highway in northern Nevada, and you basically drive flat-out as fast as your car will go for one hundred miles!

It just proves that anything goes in Nevada. We were the only Ferrari entered, but there was a Griffin, a Ford GT, a 1969 GT40, a few muscle cars, a Corvair, a Studebaker, Porsches, Corvettes, some NASCARS, and a wide assortment of other very fast cars. To MKM Racing's credit, they run safer events than the other sanctioning body, the Silver State, according to Roger Greene.

Roger Greene is the man who encouraged Tony Zito and I to try open road racing. There are only a few people in our club who have undertaken the extreme challenge of open road racing. The slogan is, "Anyone Can Enter! 95-200+MPH Legally!". At the Bonneville 100 in Wendover on June 9th of this year our own Debra Bieniek took 2nd place in the 115 MPH class. Her top speed was 142. After encouragement from Debra and assistance from Roger, and after studying everything at www.openroadracing.com I began to realize how much I didn't know about this unique sport. For one thing, I didn't know my blood type. Driver and navigator blood types must be printed on your driving helmet and firesuit. That is a safety requirement that reflects upon the inherent danger of this sport. After donating blood for the first time, I now know that I am A+.

Besides Roger and Debra, I learned that Fred Wagner has also participated and done extremely well at these events. I was encouraged to hear that Fred would also be going to Elko. Many of us know that Carl and Ellen Young experienced a horrific crash at a speed of approximately 180 mph not too many years ago. Like most mishaps, that accident was caused by tire failure. Safety equipment requirements increase with the target speed you decide to run. So Tony and I made sure we had more safety equipment than is even required for our selected target speed, including 6 point harnesses and arm restraints.

So early Thursday morning at 6:00 I picked up Tony Zito at his house in my Ferrari 308. I left my Porsche at home as the camber on my Porsche 944 Turbo S is very extreme. That much camber is great for the short track at Spring Mountain, but a little experimentation revealed that it made the car a handful at prolonged straight line runs of 130 mph and more. So instead we took my 82 Ferrari with it's neutral highway camber setting. It wasn't long before I began to miss the wonderful air conditioning of the 944.

The drive up to Elko on July 12th took us about 7 hours driving at a moderate speed with stops only for gas. Rookies must arrive a day early for practice and qualifying. Although often referred to as a race, it's actually a time trial, a high speed timed event. We passed through a few very small towns and also passed the Extraterrestrial highway on the way up. The landscape was pretty barren most of the way, but we passed by some of the highest mountains in the state that still showed patches of snow in mid-July.

Not knowing exactly what to expect, we were pleasantly surprised to see that our reasonably priced lodging at the Red Lion Inn was quite respectable. The Red Lion has a modest pool, a casino with two bars, a sundry gift shop, a cafe, and a very nice restaurant. Across the street was another casino, a small shopping center, and a brand name gas station. Other fine hotels are near the same intersection. That afternoon and evening we met a number of great people from all over the country and Canada. Talk about colorful characters! There is no doubt about it. This event is as much about the people as it is about driving the cars.

Car inspection was set up out front of the hotel in the parking lot, so we were able to get the car and safety equipment inspected Thursday afternoon. The cowboy hat was in direct reponse to Roger's instructions to bring a wide-brimmed hat. As only the rodeo contestants staying at our hotel were wearing comparable head gear, baseball hats worked well for the rest of the weekend. A meeting that evening for rookies prepared us for the anticipated practice runs and qualifying on Friday. We learned that the practice consisted of an 8 mile run along a section of the actual 50 mile stretch of highway that we would undertake on Saturday.

Friday morning the rookies met in the Red Lion parking lot and drove up together to the practice point. Unfortunately the short drive north of town took forever as we came directly up behind a wide load modular home crawling at a snail's pace along the very serpentine road. We finally made it to a tiny watering hole and the drivers were paired up with their own experienced instructor. There was some concern that none of the instructors were short enough to fit in the cramped cockpit of the 25 year old Ferrari, but fortunately one of the experienced guys, an instructor by the name of Will, not only fit the size requirement, he was also by chance a Ferrari mechanic by profession. I hoped that we would not have to test his mechanical skills over the weekend.

Soon it was our turn to test my driving abilities, and to check the stability of the Ferrari at speed. I had explained to Will that the 308 was a 1982 model with fuel injection and that it was bone stock except for modern wheels, tires, racing seats and 6 point harness. The 308 has an integrated rollcage construction. It never really had working air conditioning, but you can't run air conditioning during the speed we would be running anyway. I later realized that lack of AC does greatly affect your comfort level at all other times. My early model Ferrari came with A/C but evidently the factory air was never more than marginal at best straight from the factory. Most Ferraris do not have cup holders either.

Will asked me a few more questions about the car and how long I've had it. I got it about 7 years ago and immediately had all the suspension bushings and bearings replaced. I tracked it numerous times on tracks on the east coast as well as in Vegas and Pahrump. Nothing quite prepared me for this however. Although I've had it up over 140 mph on occaision, I've never driven it at those kinds of speeds for more than a couple of minutes at a time.

Soon it was our turn. We were strapped in and checked our in-helmet communicators. Navigators waited this out, trying to find some shade, back at the watering hole. The flagman waved us off. Instructor Will had me bring the car up to 100 mph and then 120 mph and then 130 mph until we reached 140 mph at 6,800 rpm in 5th gear. He had me hold the 140 mph as the Ferrari screamed through the rest of the 8 mile run with the tach needle straining at almost redline. The run just flashed by instantly. We passed a series of yellow and red flags and then braked hard and slowed to a near stop as course workers directed us to turn into a rancher's driveway. What a rush! So THIS is what it's all about! There we did a Y-turn and waited in line for a few minutes and made the return run. Evidently Will was satisfied with me and the car as he asked Roger, the Head Instructor, to sign off my rookie card back at the watering hole.

Now it was time for Tony to join me for a few more high speed runs. This stretch of highway was perhaps the straightest section of the following day's race course. It still provided some up and down terrain and some sweeping curves. Going down a racetrack straightaway at 140 mph is one thing, but driving down a highway centerline and coming up over blind hills and around sweeping corners at speeds approaching 140 mph is an entirely new experience. Just before we took off, a warning was passed along to each of the drivers. Mormon crickets were sighted swarming over the road at one of the hilltop turns. Don't worry, they won't be a problem; they just make the road kind of slick. We had heard the stories. They invade like locusts and can cover the road up to 3 inches thick. They smell horrible, and if you run into a cloud of them, your car will stink for months.

OK then! What next? Well, our speedometer doesn't work. No problem! We had a GPS that reads out MPH. What we didn't realize is that there is no way the driver can see that little display while driving at over a hundred miles per hour. So we decided that Tony would read the speeds to me over our in-helmet communicators. To Tony's credit, he seemed truly comfortable in our antique prancing horse at these crazy speeds. Tony read off the speeds to me over the communicator from the tiny GPS display as the Ferrari speedometer is nothing more than a completely inaccurate dial on the dash.

Two more high speed runs with Tony were enough for us to know that it was definately time to get out of our very hot 3-ply firesuits and try to beat the blistering noontime heat back for a cold one and in the wonderful Casino A/C. It was determined that we needed more velcro for all of our navigator paraphanalia, and that our two stopwatches were not serious enough for the job. One of our two stopwatches had actually melted in the sun! A few stops in town finally rewarded us with a store that could sell us two more stopwatches with buttons large enough to work with driving gloves and digital faces large enough to be readable at 140 mph. After repositioning our stopwatches and GPS with another 6 feet of velcro it was finally Miller Time.

The local bartenders advised us that the only nightlife consisted of a pub called Marty's on the way to the speed course and another "Vegas-style" club downtown called the Horseshoe Inn. We had a good time in both places and met some of the local color, but when some of the girls started buying us pink colored drinks, we wisely decided it was time to say adios and turn in for an early night. Thanks for dragging me out of there Tony!

It was another early morning wakeup call for the start of the event. No modular homes hindered our drive up to the starting point on the highway north of town. We lined up along both lanes of the highway. We felt we were as ready as we would ever be, but the start was delayed. A local resident needed an ambulance to take her to the hospital. Fortunately our race ambulance was already near the elderly couple's residence. Our ambulance picked them up and brought them through our grid to transfer the patient to the town ambulance coming the other way. Our ambulance then needed to head back up to it's position on the race course to join our waiting ambulance helicopter.

The main event finally started with cars taking off for the first 50 mile leg. A beautiful blue and orange 1969 Ford GT in the 150 Target Speed Class driven by John Tiemann and navigated by Cathy Cody of Austin Texas found themselves at somewhere between 150 and 170 mph as they came over a rise to see a "friggin" steer right in the middle of the road!!!

They squeezed through by only inches! The race course was red flagged, and everyone waited while the spotter plane figured out where the steers had come from, and sheriff deputies located the rancher. The cowboys came out in their cattle trucks and along with the department of highway workers, they rounded up the cattle and herded them back through the trampled fence.

Hours later we were all back in our cars suited up again and waiting for our turn at the christmas tree starting gate. We were given the 3 minute warning and tightened our harnesses, but nothing happened. Finally we got out of our cars. Word came back to us that one of the course workers had just received very bad news. His son was in the morgue. Our ham radio operator who communicates with our spotter plane learned that his twenty year old son had just been killed in a single car auto wreck unrelated to the race. His car missed a turn and he broke his neck after going over an embankment on his way to work at the local mine. We all waited for him to pass through our line of cars as he drove back to town.

Fortunately there were no fatalities in our group and no one in our group even suffered any injuries. There were no serious mechanical breakdowns either. A few cars did not start the race for various reasons. The cars experiencing difficulties on race day made it back to town under their own power. One rookie lost his radiator during qualifying, but another racer generously gave him the radiator out of his own Corvette after the the event finished, so he could drive it home. Contestants came form all over the country and Canada. Many drivers traveled 12 hours and more from all over the west and midwest. Some had their cars trailered in by others and then flew in themselves.

The awards banquet Saturday night was our opportunity to learn our times and reognize the winners. In addition to individual efforts, contestants are also grouped into several teams - the Corvette Team, Porsche Team, etc. Special recognition also goes out to those that have joined the 200 MPH Club. Several racers broke that barrier for the first time on Saturday. The average speed through the speed trap must exceed 200 mph, and the top speeds through the trap have been as high as 222 mph. Those drivers and navigators joining the 200 Mile Per Hour Club for the first time all received a thunderous round of applause.

Our high speed run was especially intense as Tony needed to read off the miles per hour out loud to me non-stop throughout the course. I couldn't look away from the road at those speeds to see the miles per hour display on the little GPS unit. Tony also had to manage the stopwatch calculations at every mile marker to judge our exact time. Those markers were tiny, and they had the mileage numbers displayed sideways. That wouldn't have been a problem normally except that they seemed to fly by in an instant. Our ability to stay so amazingly close to the target speed was due entirely to Tony's ability to multi-task while navigating.

Tony Zito and I took third in the 120 Target Speed Class in my Ferrari 308 at less than a half second off perfect time at .483 seconds from the mark. Since we were 18 seconds off the mark at the halfway point, we did the return leg much faster at speeds of very close to 140 mph. We had to be very careful because if we went over 140 mph, we would have been disqualified! Fred Wagner took second running solo in the 130 Target Speed Class in his Porsche 911 Turbo at .478 from the mark. That is a hugh accomplishment for anyone driving without a navigator! Roger Greene and his brother Bill took first in the 155 Class in his Porsche GT2 at an absolutely amazing .264 from the mark!!! Both Fred and Roger were up against very stiff competition in their respective classes. Roger and Bill also received recognition for achieving their incredible time without the help of a GPS using only manual stopwatches.

The Porsche Team took the Team Challenge with the best overall results. Overall it was a tremendous effort by all the participants, and we had a great time. The ride back to Vegas was a challenge as we headed south into even more oppressive heat, but we managed to survive the blistering experience. The word for AC in Italian is "windows"! The best way I can describe the open road racing experience is to say that it is one thing to drive at 140 mph for a minute or two on an absolutely straight stretch of road. It's an entirely different thing to drive that fast trying to make up time going up over hills, down through valleys and around blind corners for 20 minutes at a time. It was the experience of a lifetime. It was totally awesome!

Roger already wants to know, will I be going again to The Pony Run in August? Wait a minute Roger, I'm still trying to catch my breath!!!

I'll do it again, but give me a year or so to recover!

See the pics in the gallery... http://www.lvrpca.com/gallery.html