KANSAS SPEEDWAY – In a faraway place long, long ago, author Paul Erlich wrote in a best-selling (Chicken Little) book that by the 1980's Planet Earth's food production would tank and couldn't, wouldn't sustain fewer than half the stomachs now inhabiting Terra Firma, your faithful author tripped through Kansas City.
What’s food, population and the like got to do with racing? The same as President John F. Kennedy touting across-the-board tax cuts. Erlich was wrong; Vice President Joe Bidden was wrong, too, when a lot of folks initially agreed with each.
It was the Age of Aquarius, a time when people were "dodging" bullets in more ways than one, and the dummy which preceded this one learned Kansas City straddled two states: its namesake and Missouri.
The second lesson learned was the cleanliness of Kansas, or at least the parts which this westward bound traveler then saw.
Arriving late Friday evening much as he had way back in The Day, both appeared nonetheless as true today as when Jupiter was in Mars, or wherever the heck it was. (Now, how such a large planet could fit within the smaller of the two was, still is outside of yours truly’s capacity to grasp.)
Yet, on Friday, combating colder temperatures was at the top of many agendas and a Saturday morning subject wagged by the tongues of darn near everyone having made the trek to Kansas Speedway for two days of Rolex Sports Car Series and Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge testing.
The colder Kansas City area temperatures – something which the residents said had only just chased away "beautiful 70-degree days" – brought forth grumbles equal to the throatiest Ford V-8s found in the Rolex Series and Continental Tire garages. Yet, everyone was equally full of praise for the area's lush green grass and, forbid, even Kansas Speedway, itsownself. (No, boys and girls, "itsownself" isn't proper, but Ol' DC is hisownself improper. Just remember to eat your grits, listen to your grandfather's stories and learn one of the best tunes of all: a race engine at full song.)
Enough with that sideline filler: on to the important stuff.
It's cold. The tires are cold and, as Starworks Motorsport's driver Alex Popow put it, the track itself is in need of tire warmers more so than the tires rolling over it.
Then again, Saturday's heavily clothed Popow is Venezuelan – inhabitants of a South American country situated just north of the Equator (it's really hot and humid along the Equator, Menendez). For Popow, who nowadays calls South Florida "home" more than not, temperatures even at his Miami-area home – where the last recorded snow flurry occurred in Jan. 1977 – are a touch too low.
At the midday lunch break Roush Performance No. 51 Mustang Boss 302R driver Joey Atterbury smiled from ear to ear as he talked of the 1.5-mile tri-oval portion's challenging radius banking – heretofore reserved for those of the stock car-only crowd – prompting his perplexed wonderment.
Atterbury's co-driver, Shelby Blackstock, named the road course's Turn 6 transition from infield to tri-oval – two hard-left turns – as most the vexing for him.
"It is a new track to everyone here," said a smiling Michael Shank Racing driver Oswaldo "Ozz" Negri Jr., who agreed with Blackstock when it came to Turn 6, though Negri’s reasoning was one involving overall familiarity.
"Just driving on a new track provides a bunch of challenges that we got over a long time ago at tracks like Watkins Glen or Daytona.
"At those tracks, we know where we are, the turn-ins, apexes and so on. We even know where to find certain light poles or fences. Here, it's a different deal. When you’re in unfamiliar surroundings, everything is weird."
For Negri and the roughly 20 other drivers on hand, Kansas Speedway's 1.5-mile tri-oval radius banking – of which about 95-percent is used before being interrupted by about nearly mile's worth of infield road course – makes for a very fast track.
Unofficially, the two Roush Boss 302R's on hand had bested the 100 mph average-speed barrier in the Saturday morning session and by afternoon's end session picked up another five mph.
Five DPs are here for the test – MSR's No. 60 Ford-Riley; Starworks usual flotilla (amazing for such an "underfunded" team, huh?) of three cars (2 Gen3; 1 Gen2 Ford-Riley); and Action Express Racing's No. 9 Corvette DP.
The above order pretty well respectively represents how the DPs ran by the end of Saturday's final session, averaging roughly 20 mph faster laps than that of the Roush Mustangs.
(The primary driving contingents for the DPs: AER, João Barbosa, Brian Frisselle; MSR, Ozz Negri; Starworks, "Don't Call Me" Al Popow, Sebastien Bourdais and, possibly, Scott Mayer.)
So, then, with all this cold weather and, certainly, warmer weather expected for Aug. 16 and 17, 2013, when both series return here for earnest combat, what exactly does one learn?
“First and foremost; the track,” MSR owner Mike Shank said. “While the temperatures will be far different, we’ll be able to take data from this test and adequately extrapolate the future conditions we expect to encounter. It gives us a leg up. That’s about it.”
And, at this time, comes the end of this particular session, leaving still more extrapolations to come.
Later.
DC
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