DAYTONA BEACH – For those outside of the loop on four-time NASCAR Sprint Cup champ Jimmie Johnson's trials and tribulations encountered while engaged in practice for Saturday's 48th Rolex 24 At Daytona (24-hours of non-stop racing action, folks, beginning at 3:30 p.m. and seen on SPEEDtv):
Just as would be expected of a talented race car driver who's nailed four, count 'em four NASCAR Sprint Cup championships, Mr. Johnson was moving the mail at roughly Turn-4 of Daytona International Speedway's 3.56-mile road course.
For all you folks more familiar with the Big D's tri-oval configuration, the sportycar types deal with just a little more than a mile's worth of extra asphalt that has a few extra turns. So, it can be a tad confusing. Been there; done that myself.
The road course's Turn 4 - pretty darn far from NASCAR Turn 4 - is otherwise termed "The Kink" because a properly configured race car is capable of traveling the section at a speed various sportscar folks have estimated at between 90-150 mph. Unfortunately, just like just about everyone else in the racing world, they can only convey the "gear" and it's corresponding "RPM" reading at a given point - while the rest of the world expresses speed in MPH or KPH.
Why they do this is kinda of beyond this writer, especially when the racing types repeatedly say things like "fan involvement." Well, it seems that if "fan involvement" really was big on the agenda, then the racers should talk in at least one aspect to which fans can directly relate. But no, so as to save four pounds (if that much) they won't use speedometers.
But this writer digresses.
Bottom line: Mr Johnson had a shunt, a monosyllabic description that means something like: "A car and its driver drove off course in a largely if not certainly uncontrolled manner and continued to travel pall mall until an outside force was able to channel, dissipate or otherwise cause the initial force to cease." (One supposes it could be said the outside agency exerted a "force of equal or greater energy" but then opened for discussion would be all sorts of stuff like "conservation" and, maybe, eventually, E=MC2.)
(Let's not.)
"I had gone through the turn the lap before and the GT car in front of me gave me the line," Mr. Johnson said as he intently watched repairs being undertaken Thursday evening on the No. 99 GAINSCO Auto Insurance Chevrolet-Riley Daytona Prototype he wrecked earlier.
"The next lap, I was going through the turn again and was coming up on (another) GT car and figured he'd do the same thing; he didn't."
Instead, the slower car abruptly moved to the right and into Johnson's path in an area that while the track might be plenty wide for double-wide cars poking along at, say, 60 mph, it wasn't wide enough for cars going faster than that.
"I had nowhere to go but to the right and into the grass," Johnson said.
Well, if grass and dirt were good enough, asphalt and/or concrete-paved roads wouldn't be necessary, anywhere.
Johnson commenced his shunt, which lasted somewhere around 200-250 meters (sportycar talk for "a long way").
"I had a couple of seconds before impact and I saw the guardrail coming up. I figured there were some tires on the other side to absorb the impact. There weren't.
"There was one place on the whole track where they didn't have tires and I hit it; just my luck," the uninjured Johnson chuckled.
"I kind of scrunched up," Johnson said while drawing his hands and arms tightly to the front of his chest and abdomen, at the same time lowering his head - as though one were attempting to do an abdomen crunch-style exercise.
"Then I realized it might be better to relax my neck a little so I lifted my head and let the HANS do its thing."
Johnson's resultant knock into the guardrail (similar to the blue barriers seen at Watkins Glen) set off something akin to a land, air and sea search involving one helicopter, a commercial air carrier and Johnson's personal airplane that ultimately fetched a mostly flat, roughly 3x4 tube-steel bordered stainless-steel plate that replaced the damaged part. One is certain it’s got a fancy name but so do some other things not easily remembered.
Some descriptions would've had one believe it was the car's entire rear. Well, when one added the transaxle, gearbox and engine (bodywork, too!), it pretty much was the car's rear. But it wasn't all, or even "mostly" chassis, for sure.
Team manager Terry Wilbert of Lewisville, Texas, (but born in Louisville, Ky. – go figure) said the team likely would "have the car back together and buttoned up" well before the 2 a.m. Saturday limit placed on it by Rolex Series officials.
At any rate, Johnson felt poorly over having wrecked a car in which fellow racers Jon Fogarty and Alex Gurney had won the 2009 Rolex Sports Car Series championship (the second of two by the GAINSCO team, the first coming in 2007).
Indeed, team engineer Kyle Brannan (kinda of similar to Chad Knaus' to the No. 48 Hendrick Chevrolet's operation) felt the car would be "as good as new" when repairs were completed.
"We'll just set her up with the data we have and put her back on the track," Brannan said.
"Who knows? Fate's a strange thing," Wilbert - who'd be the rough equivalent of "car chief" - added. "We might just win the next three races."
Asked if he learned a lesson, Johnson quickly responded, "Give 'em the line (on the track) and if I gotta crash, then find somewhere that has some tires!"
You just gotta love this guy.
Later,
DC
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