MILWAUKEE
One of the most experienced oval crews in the history of the event gathered at Milwaukee for our first DAY race in three years, albeit SaturDAY, back in early June. There was only one rookie, and very few novices, and I want to thank Milwaukee Mile Chief Observer Ray George and his crew of stalwarts for organizing and pulling off a great effort. As part of the renovation and new construction that occurred during the winter of 2004, the land line was pulled out by its roots and no replacement for it is planned, leading us to use radios for the only time in 2005. And as most of you know, radio comm is dodgy at best, and downright scary on ovals. However, the Milwaukee Mile crew made the LEAST of a good thing and kept communications very brief and down to a minimum, and we slid through the 2-day event without a problem. Thanks again, everyone for keepin’ it green!!
One of the highlights of the event had to be the performance of our starter JD Wilbur. Our new Race Director, Tony Cotman, had his first opportunity to monitor and pay close attention to the actions of the starter during a busy oval race, and was very pleased. Tony stands down by the operations communicator, the safety communicator and me through most of an event, and has a good habit of talking out loud as he keeps a tab on competition, especially the front-runners’ progress through lapped traffic. We never really have to ask him what he’s thinking. He would see a situation develop in turns one or two and lean in to say “JD really needs to lay down a big blue flag on this one,” and un-prompted, out the blue flag would undoubtedly come, prompting Tony to exclaim “JD’s on fire!” mid-way through the race. As mentioned before, Tony is still very impressionable in his first season as race director and we have not disappointed him.
The Wisconsin State Fair Park, owners of the Milwaukee Mile, would love to have us back, and we’d like to return, but that will be up in the air pending the finding of a promoter/operator for the facility, which is currently without one. We shall see when the 2006 schedule is released. Probably in August.
PORTLAND
Our return to Portland, which was also in jeopardy of continuing for a while, came off pretty well. We had a healthy turnout of Marshals, and for the most part they did a great job of keeping the track dry! That helped a little at the gate on race day and Kevin Kalkhoven announced in victory lane that the event would stay on the calendar – but his team had just won its first race a few minutes earlier!!
First-time event flag chief Ken Killam did a first-class job, his TMs supported us well, and thanks to all who came out and flagged, communicated, or intervened (there were a few, which were given a big nod of approval by our safety team) The crews in the Festival Curves had their hands full as usual, but were aided tremendously by the re-design of the 2nd turn during the off-season by Circuit Director Chris Kneifel and the PIR staff. I think we went four-for-four getting through the Festival Curves as far as the Champ Car sanctioned events went (2 Atlantic races,) but the biggest event of the weekend had to be the Drifting Car blowing up and catching fire on the backstretch…
Last year at mid-season, I started timing course clearances and converting them into speed around the track. It’s a great and fun way to snap all to attention, team-build and polish up the comm and listening skills. Two tracks not on our schedule this year set the bar pretty high, Road America with its long distances clearing at just over 1200 mph and Laguna Seca’s communicators shattering that record with an incredible 1740 mph (almost 3 times the speed of sound) later in the year. The good folks at Portland put together a fine first effort at 651mph. More to come.
CLEVELAND
Cleveland’s annual splash at the lakefront is CART/Champ Car’s oldest event that it created on its own. It has tried to disappear twice, to no avail, but may be on the block again, pending the results of this year’s event. The organizers, trying to give on-track-value-for-the-price-of-admission, loaded the schedule to the gills with Champ Car, 2 Atlantic races, Trans-Am, Speed World Challenge ST and GT, and FF2000. Yes, very, very long days, and yes, we rightfully heard about it from those marshals that came out and those who did not. Point very much taken. Plus, there was a vintage event at Mid-Ohio, and the June Sprints at RA. First time event chair Lauri Burkons, her asst. Dave Bueno, and first-time flag chief Dale Strimple rousted out a crew of only about thirty five strong, but everyone really, really delivered. Champ Car, Race Control, our stewards and I thank you all immensely.
The quality of the work on course was truly outstanding, especially on Friday when we had less than 30 out there from 10AM to 8PM. We tried as best we could to make it easy as possible for those who came to help out, and knocked some of the early pace car & two-seater sessions and evening drifting sessions from the marshals responsibilities, trimming where we could, and mustering without a meeting on Saturday Morning. Despite the heat, conditions, hours and work load, it sounded like there were far more than two or three per station. The Champ Car race itself was somewhat of a rodeo, with a lot more off-course action that your typical Cleveland race. Yeesh!!
Several Champ car drivers lobbied Tony Cotman before the weekend to stop the dive-bombers we often see at Cleveland’s infamous first turn. Some kind of “foul line” was bandied about in the weeks leading up to the race, as well as a plastic road construction barrel that was placed in the center of the wide entrance to turn one for Saturday’s Atlantic race, to which drivers had to stay left of while entering the turn. Didn’t work. Katherine Legge found herself too far right approaching the barrel and pushed left to avoid it, and cars went a-flyin’. So we did the Champ Car start sans-barrel and only lost two at the start. Coulda been worse. Just like the 17th hole at the PGA Golf tournament at Sawgrass ( a green surrounded entirely by water but for a skinny bridge) Cleveland’s first turn is just something we have to deal with, period.
Have I thanked the Cleveland Marshal’s enough? Just one more time. Thanks everyone for coming out and lifting us up through trying circumstances… THAT, as well as our third-ever four digit course clearance speed of 1673mph!!! We had a few Canadians come down to help, and they are on for our next two races, in Toronto (the 20th running) and our new airport circuit (which is even more wide-ass open than Cleveland) in Edmonton.
See you at the track, Eh????
JHS
