From Friday’s Corning Leader . . .
‘Nuff said there, huh?
NUMBER 9, NUMBER 9, NUMBER 9
Included on the White Album, Revolution 9 was Yoko Ono’s first solo recorded, um, performance as a “Beatle” and it was, still is one of the strangest “tunes” you’ll ever hear. Its repetitious use of “number nine” runs the length of a longer-than-usual cut, especially for its time. (For the record, Ono really wasn’t credited with the Revolution 9’s but it was relatively early in hers and John Lennon’s relationship and no one wished to rock the boat, which sank soon afterward, anyway, after Paul McCartney objected to Revolution 9’s inclusion on the album but lost that battle. It wasn’t long afterward that Lennon and Ono started getting naked in public places and McCartney formed “Wings.”)
Thinking they should’ve actually been played Monday at that existential Connecticut track, a few strange tunes were nevertheless played at The Glen Friday in preparation for today’s Sahlen’s 6 hours of The Glen (2 p.m. EDT) on the 11-turn, 3.4-mile race course that’s been around almost as long as Mark Patterson.
Patterson (No. 6 Cap & Associates Ford-Riley), Nelson Philippe (No. 7 Flex-Box BMW-Riley) and Paul Dalla Lana (No. 94 Turner Motorsports BMW M6) each drove his car into a late apex and a likewise late exit at the turn. Unfortunately, at that latter point the racing surface gives way to The Glen’s famous unforgiving blue Armco barrier and “recycled” tires contained by netting. If one doesn’t get you, the other will – including the tire netting which caught and ate the No. 6’s right rear wing endplate, bending the struts (we’re hearing a lot of that word lately, huh? Another Mayan 2012 apocalyptic clue? Ask BP).
Though Patterson would later get the piece of a spotlight he so ardently enjoys, it would be the The Dalla Lana who got the action at No. 9 started with an early morning spin that didn’t just rearrange the formerly beautiful BMW’s rear, but removed it. And we’re talking “gone.” An oil spill in the turn was initially thought to be at fault but later information from Peter Argetsinger, son of Watkins Glen International founder Cameron Argetsinger and a championship-winning racer in his own right, suggested “weepers” are at fault. Argetsinger is coaching the two-car, six-driver Peter Baron FlexBox and Corsa Car Care driving contingent.
Philippe did much the same as did Patterson, raking the right side, though Patterson also did cleanly crack, from fore to aft, the No.6’s gearbox casing.
THE FORMERLY EXITING TURN 11 . . .
. . . Has become the insanely exiting No. 11 turn.
Nick Ham and Eggs (his self-conjured moniker, not mine) cracked his – the No. 43 Sahlen’s RX-8 – big time after glancing off the new not-particularly safer barrier (so says nearly every driver with whom this mouth from the south has spoken) now sitting at the very edge of Turn 11’s track-out.
“I feel terribly,” an unusually quiet Ham said later in the day. “The car’s not going to make the grid; we’re done. (Joe Sahlen has) been a really nice guy about it. He seems unfazed by it all but I feel badly and want to make it up to him,” Ham hinting he may do the Rolex Series’ June 18-19 Mid-Ohio race.
Ham wasn’t doing anything that hadn’t for years, if not decades naturally done by those entering The Glen’s front, pit-box straight.
The scene of some of the track’s most hellacious wrecks across many racing series, Peter Argetsinger believes the situation only was made worse with the SAFER Barrier’s new location.
“First, 11’s a high-speed corner; drivers are carrying a lot of momentum through there because they’ve got one of the track’s two-best passing opportunities at the end of the front straight as they go into (Turn) One. A driver’s got to get a jump on the car he intends to pass so he tends to let it all hang out coming through 11. That’s why you’d see so many left-sides go off there. Only time will tell, but putting the Safer Barrier right at the edge of the track will probably slow the cars down, which will also probably reduce the passing in Turn One. It’s also made the turn more dangerous because cars that in the past could gather it back in after a late apex now will tend to glance off the barrier, shoot diagonally across the track and hit the wall at pit-in. What they did there at 11 was a mistake; plain and simple.”
We’ll certainly know something later today. The Sahlen’s 6 Hours of The Glen gets underway at 2 p.m. EDT.
Later,
DC
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