As hard as I tried I couldn’t get focused on anything to do with the bank the rest of the day. The focus was on opening night at the races. Bret didn’t help because every time he looked at me he wanted to talk about them. Going back to when I first started at this bank I knew he was a big fan and that he knew some of the drivers at the local track really well. One of them, CJ, had decided to change tracks and go to the one Cliffy raced at. When Bret found out about it he was both excited and ‘bummed’. The excitement was because CJ was the best driver at the local track and the move would pit him against a group of much better drivers and he wanted to see how he’d match up with them. The ‘bummed’ part was that it took an hour from Bret’s house to the track and that was a problem for him. With only one car and his wife working every other Saturday he was going to have a hard time getting to many races.
I was more nervous about the races than I’d been when I was driving. Pulling in to the pit area on a race day was totally different than it had been the day we went for practice. It sounds like a cliche but ‘there was excitement in the air’. Having raced at the track for a few years Cliffy had an assigned pit stall. I recognized the names of the other drivers in the row of cars that we were in and, as far as local racing was concerned it was a “who’s who” of drivers with many track championships among them. One of them was a driver I’d seen one of the first times I’d actually attended a race some fifteen or sixteen years earlier.
The schedule called for three separate 15 minute practice sessions. As I’ve previously mentioned, Cliffy was concerned about the soft “gumball” tires and how many laps they would be able to make so chose to go out for only the first one. He came in after about five “hot” laps and said he was happy with the way the car handled. There were over 30 cars for our division, the most powerful of the four divisions that raced at the track. First on our docket were three 10 lap qualifying heats (races). Seven cars from each race qualified for the main (feature) event which was the one that paid money. The starting order was based on the final standings from the previous season and Cliffy was about in the middle. For our heat he started smack dab in the middle, fifth out of ten cars and had no trouble qualifying for the 25 lap feature. When he returned to the pits we wanted to know what he thought about the tires. When he, straight faced, said they weren’t worth a s__t we were all disappointed. Within minutes there were about a half dozen drivers surrounding him wanting to know if he liked them. He repeated what he’d told us and the drivers walked away. It wasn’t until things had quieted down that he called us all together and told us they were really fantastic and that he could put the car any place on the track he wanted it to go. He added that he wanted to keep it a secret from the competition and had a big smile on his face when he did.
Lining up for the main event we were 10th, on the outside of the fifth row. After seeing the starting line-up he told us he thought that with the new tires that he had a good chance to finish in the top three. As he pulled out onto the track we all agreed that would be great. In fifteen or sixteen races the previous year he only managed a couple of top threes without a win. The track was only a 1/5 of a mile, the shortest track that raced our class of cars and because it was so small there were always a lot of wrecks. All we could do was pray the we weren’t in any of them.
By the time we reached the middle of the race there hadn’t been even one wreck and Cliffy had worked his way up to second. We (the crew) were going out of our minds because the car that was leading wasn’t very good. Cliffy finally passed him and was pulling away when the first wreck took place. They throw a yellow flag signaling the cars to slow down until the wreck is cleaned up. The yellow flag laps didn’t count and when the race continued there were but a few laps left. Cliffy won by about five car lengths and there was mayhem in the pit grandstand when the checkered flag waved.
As ridiculous as it may seem, we (the crew) didn’t know what to do. It was the first win at this level of racing that they (or I) had experienced. We wanted to run out onto the track to congratulate Cliffy and to celebrate with him but the track official wouldn’t let us. We need up just jumping up and downing smacking each other while we waited for Cliffy to pull into the pits. When he did and pulled into our pit stall it wasn’t just us who crowded around the car. Even though Cliffy hadn’t previously won he was very popular with many other drivers and they were there for him. He actually had a hard time getting out of the car with people walking up to the window to shake his hand. It was crazy!
The women had brought food, as planned, to feed the crew but no one had thought about beer (or anything else) for a victory celebration. However, there were others in the pit area who had brought libations which they proceeded to share. The track promoter had a rule that everyone had to be off the grounds by 1am but even he joined in, stopping by the car and telling us we had an extra half hour for our party. Even with that extra time there were still about two dozen people other than our own there when the security people made it clear that we had to go. It truly was MAYHEM IN MAY!
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| The very first one! (note the lack of a fire suit) |
To be continued...
3 comments:
I know you are aware of what those cars people chopped up and ended up junking are worth today in the street rod market. Always fun going to tracks although I was more on the dragsters then oval. The smell of race tracks still lingers in my memories, nitro, rubber and bleach. A little different in your case. Never could stand dirt tracks, just couldn't stand being coated in dirt at the end of a night. Thanks for the memories. The noise, forgot the NOISE, with never a thought to hearing protection, paying now, but worth every minute.
LOL, I felt excited reading about the win, like I was there too with you guys!
Cliffy's trickery about the tires reminded me of a clip I'd seen of the great motorcycle racer Kenny Roberts and how he'd play head games with the competition. He'd do little things like walk by another guy's bike and look at the tire and smirk, or say something like, you gonna run it like that? Even though there was nothing actually wrong, it'd get into the other guys head!
Bad
OB... the car on the picture was a 1937 Dodge coupe. My first car was a 1937 Dodge but I never considered using it as a race car. Back in the early 50's the only cars used were Fords... no Chevys or Chrysler products. It wasn't until the early to mid 60's when the Fords were almosy all gone that the others started showing up.
BS... Oh, the 'head games' that were played! I could write a couple of posts just on that subject...
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