CHILL, MAN, CHILL

 

THE PITS . . .

. . . Which, in this case, the meaning is more akin to “bad news” or “at a low point” than that stretch of asphalt on which are found defined areas for servicing a race cars temporarily at rest.

Never before has this scribe climbed aboard two airplanes in which race car drivers have been more bummed.

From Daytona Beach and it’s infamous northerly “transfer station to everywhere,” Atlanta’s Hartsfield Jackson International - where still more grumbling sorts were added – drivers are bummed that their weekend was to be spent in Millville, New Jersey’s New Jersey Motorsports Park. (Below image courtesy of NJMP)

Surprisingly, especially given past hassles at the track, the drivers’ attitude had more to do with being in a car at NJMP rather than being at the track, itself.

Mostly centered on “heat issues” – National Weather Service temperature predictions say the thermometer’s ambient readings will reach 100 degrees Saturday and Sunday – drivers predicted cockpit temperatures would easily climb into the 140-degree range.

At Lime Rock Park, GAINSCO Auto Insurance’s Alex Gurney (at left, with Jon Fogarty in hat, at Miller Motorsports Park in 2009) all but poured forth from his No. 99 Chevrolet-Riley Daytona Prototype, so exhausted was he after a fourth-place finish.

Dehydrated far more than even he realized (which is a commonly occurring aspect of the condition) the two-time Daytona Prototype championship-winning driver, most recently victorious at Laguna Seca (with capable assists in all above categories from Fogarty, of course) was on the tail-end of his recovery when he arrived in Watkins Glen for the Sahlen’s 6 Hours at The Glen three days later.

It was a relatively hot Lime Rock Park race for everyone – especially given the humidity readings after morning storms drenched the area – but at Lime Rock it was Gurney’s cool suit that delivered the knockout blow.

“As a whole, I’m concerned for my drivers,” GAINSCO’s “brains’ on the pit stand Kyle Brannan (left) said Thursday in the NJMP paddock between tweaking the “Red Dragon’s” settings for Friday’s first Rolex Series practice.

Brannan suggests one principal improvement: “Move the radiator from in front of the drivers.”

Failing such, for years an evidently intractable position within the series, “then allow us more air channeling” within the driver’s compartment, Brannan insisted.

While Gurney’s coolsuit failure can be blamed for aggravating the situation, then would it have been needed at all had Lime Rock’s temperatures been far lower? (The coolsuit shown below is offered by FAST Racing Products, long a leader in offering driver-safety products. It was not the coolsuit worn by Gurney, by the way).

“Yeah, in the 30’s, maybe,” one driver sarcastically offered.

“I’m not interested in playing follow-the-leader with anyone in anything,” said a race-winning Rolex Series’ GT driver, who like many drivers quoted herein wasn’t interested in repercussions possibly arising from “shaking the tree,” and thus shall remain anonymous.

“But the series needs to adopt a policy of assuring cars run cooler in the cockpit. They’re gonna have a serious accident that’s attributable to either heat (exhaustion) or (too-high) carbon dioxide levels – if they haven’t already,” the driver continued, hinting that Gunter Schaldach’s Road America flight of the No. 07 CoolTV Chevrolet Camaro might’ve been carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide related.

Another driver, separate from the above discussion, spoke of the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO) having mandated maximum in-cockpit temperature readings and that Chevrolet has for years been working on a now-successful race-car air conditioning system. The ACO rule requires all closed-cockpit cars, prototype to touring, be fitted with air conditioning systems which maintain a temperature of no more than 32-degrees centigrade (89.6-degrees Fahrenheit).

“If we could just get better airflow through the car, maybe that’d help,” said still another driver whose race car is well known for hitting the highest of the upper-level heat ranges in the Rolex Series.

“Right now, I’m jumping into a sauna that gets hotter than the one I’ve got at home,” he said.

“The biggest problem for transportation of any sort is the efficiencies that are lost to throwing a mass at an atmosphere. And the faster you attempt to travel, the more exponentially significant air-mass resistance becomes.

“The way we’ve overcome that condition, to only a given extent though, is through aerodynamics. A more aerodynamically efficient car allows for greater top-end speeds and fewer BTUs expended in getting there.

“The downside is that aerodynamic efficiency quickly channels air around and away from the car. Make a car more aerodynamic and the car consequently also becomes hotter because airflow into a car creates drag, which creates a whole new set of circumstances to overcome insofar as a race car is concerned.”

While a cool suit failure can be blamed for what has happened to Gurney and others, if interior car temperatures were a tad more bearable no one would have to wear cool suits that too often fail when a failure of just once in a racing car could lead to a conflagration of considerable proportion.

In an ESPN.com report, a 23-year-old Motocross rider died earlier this month after suffering a heat stroke during the RedBug National in Buchanan, Michigan.

According to the story, Bill Lichtle, older brother of the deceased rider, Josh Lichtle, said, "He got overheated, basically, and by the last laps he was practically passing out on the bike. He just wouldn't quit."

Rushed to Saint Joseph’s Medical Center just across the state line in Mishawaka, Indiana, Josh Lichtle was placed in an induced coma in an attempt to reduce his core body temperature and save vital organs subject to failure when overheated. Nevertheless, the rider was pronounced dead early the following morning.

The high temperature recorded at nearby South Bend Regional Airport on the day Lichtle died?

93 degrees.

That’s at least seven-degrees cooler than the predicted ambient temperature for this weekend’s Rolex Series and Continental Tire races.

It was Josh Licktle’s “wouldn’t quit” attitude that so closely reminds one of Gurney – and just about every top driver ever seen.

Perhaps one can make the argument that such is a common but undesirable trait; maybe it’s the difference between a champion and a loser.

How about an argument that these types of drivers are needed, both in terms of entertainment (“door-to-door, wheel-to-wheel racing excitement!”) and marketing the series (“poster children”) and that they, in having such importance, should actively be preserved?

It seems, then, not killing-off drivers as a result of too much heat is of as great importance as any HANS device, fire extinguisher or five-point seatbelt harness.

Later,

DC