I’m going to die.
It was 1993, and I was competing in the Indy car race at Nazareth Speedway. Driving for Dale Coyne Racing, I was in the cockpit of a 1992 Lola-Chevy.
The thoughts going through my head were not good. They were full of fear.
In that era of Indy car racing, teams upgraded to a new chassis every single year, and each new model was faster than the previous. So, a year-old car was not ideal. Nor was the engine, since mine was the “A” version, and other Chevy-Ilmor teams were now on the “C” version. The difference was estimated to be at least 75 horsepower.
The biggest difference with the chassis was the aerodynamics, and how they adapted to rule changes. At the end of the ’92 season, the strakes in the diffusers were banned. So, race car designers and engineers do what they do best – come up with other ways to make the cars faster, despite having less to work with. The ’93 cars – like the one driven by the Nazareth winner, Nigel Mansell – were developed in wind tunnels to generate more downforce with less drag than the previous season’s car (and definitely better than the year-old cars), without strakes in the diffuser.
My ’92 Lola had been designed and developed with strakes in the diffuser, but for ’93 they had to be removed, making the car less aero-efficient. By the way, that’s an understatement.
The undertray – the swooping-up portion of the floor at the rear of an Indy car – is a bit like a tunnel. It has “walls” on either side, a “ceiling” that covers the bottom of the car, and it almost touches the track surface in a way that encloses it all. Because of the way the top swoops upward, the air flowing under the car – from the narrow opening at the front to the larger space at the rear exit – it generates a low-pressure area, essentially sucking the car down to the track.
But air can get a bit messy at times, especially if left on its own to flow along a curved area. When air gets messy or turbulent, it causes drag. Think of this drag as friction. That’s where these strakes come in. Essentially, they’re vertical fins, and in the case of the tunnel or undertray of an Indy car, they’re hanging from the bottom of the diffuser. They help the air not get messy. When they’re removed, two things happen: more turbulent airflow which causes drag, and less negative pressure to suck the car down to the track.
That’s what my ’92 Lola was dealing with. But airflow can be kinda funny, at times. It takes a very small change to make things go from good to bad, or even not-so-good to really bad. That’s what I was dealing with. Changing aero efficiency.
If I was running by myself on track, the team had dialed in the balance so it was okay to drive. It wasn’t the fastest car in the field, but it was very drivable. However, if a car got within about 15 car lengths behind me, it did something weird with the air flowing off the rear of my car. It was like taking the flap off the rear wing; it lost about 10 percent of the downforce off the rear while not changing anything on the front, so my car would immediately go into full-on Tokyo drift mode.
The thing is, on a one-mile oval in an Indy car, there is almost never a time when another car is not less than 15 car lengths behind another car. Each and every time, as I approached Turns 2, 3, 4, and 5 (Nazareth was a tri-oval, with Turn 1 being the kink in the front straight – which, by the way, was also not easy to flat in my car), I’d glance in the mirrors to see how far back other cars were: If they were more than 15 lengths back, I could turn in at full throttle; if less than 15 lengths, I’d have to give the throttle a big breathe and be prepared to use opposite lock on the steering.
In road racing, opposite lock is not uncommon, and is often used (in a way) to go faster. On an oval, it’s used to get a ride in an ambulance. Too many road racers, in their early laps on an oval, try to catch an oversteer moment with some opposite lock since it feels natural to them and because they’ve used this way of catching the car many, many times. What most often happens then is the rear slide is caught, and micro-seconds later the car turns hard right and tries to knock the outside wall down. And I’m talking about a wall that is made out of concrete (nowadays, it’s hopefully covered with Safer Barrier – something that had not been invented back in ’93 – to absorb some of the energy).
Two hundred laps times four corners makes eight hundred left turns, jammed into a lap that takes about 20 seconds, all adding up to one-and-a-quarter hours of some of the most challenging and fun racing, or something I would not wish on my worst enemy. I don’t know how many times I used opposite lock to catch the rear of the car that day at somewhere around 170 MPH, but I’m sure it was in the hundreds.
That weekend, I dialed up the intensity of some words and phrases that were vaguely in my vocabulary: Massive oversteer. Scary loose. Going to kill me. Where’s the nearest hospital, because that’s where I’ll meet you later.
Every driver, no matter who or how good they are, has tiny moments of fear. I’d even say they are so small that they’re really just moments of self-preservation. Most drivers have instances that are a bit more than this, to the point of being very short moments of fear. I had big, long moments of fear. In fact, it started when the green flag fell and ended just after the checkered was thrown. More than an hour of being really, really scared.
After the race, I found out that Danny “Spin and Win” Sullivan pitted his Galles Racing car before the end of the race, got out of the car, and said it was too dangerous to drive. It was the latest and greatest generation of car and engine, and yet, even Sullivan’s team had not got the handling dialed in just right, and it was scaring the 1985 Indy 500 champion. If I’d known that someone like Danny was smart and risk-averse enough to do that, maybe I’d have done the same?
Fear is a multi-dimensional thing. There’s fear of dying, fear of being hurt, fear of embarrassment, fear of financial ruin, fear of losing one’s reputation, fear of hurting someone else, fear of… well, many things. And one of these types of fear can overpower another.
For me, at Nazareth, my biggest fear was not living up to my promises. Specifically, not living up to what my sponsors expected. One thing I knew for sure is they didn’t expect me to quit in the middle of a race! In my case, the fear of not living up to a promise made to my sponsors outweighed my fear of injury (or worse).
For drivers who have never driven on an oval, let alone raced wheel-to-wheel with 25 other Indy cars, it looks simple. Just turn left, that’s all. Yet, it’s some of the most challenging, mind-blitzingly intense, and precise racing I’ve ever done. You’re constantly in traffic, passing and being passed, all the while trying to sense where you can add just one more MPH, or turn the steering wheel a tiny bit less (since that scrubs speed). When the car is working well, it may be the most fun I’ve ever had in a car; when the car is not working well, it’s the only time I couldn’t wait to get out of a car.
Driving into pit lane after the cool-down lap, I noticed how hard I was breathing. Later, I wondered just how much of the previous 1.25 hours I’d spent holding my breath. Stopped in my pit box, and as my crew chief leaned in to help me out of the car, I looked up and saw Robin, my wife. I had never felt more relieved in my life. She didn’t have to come to the hospital (again) to visit me.
After that race I questioned whether I wanted to continue racing Indy cars if this is what I was going to feel like during every oval race. I questioned whether I had what it took, and whether I was brave enough to race ovals. But deep down inside, I knew that if I could hang on to that bad of a car, for that many opposite lock moments, on an oval at 170 MPH, then if I could get into a front-running car, I could run at the front.
During that time, I was also questioning whether I’d ever be able to make the jump from driving uncompetitive Indy cars to competitive ones. I’d hoped that I could show what I could do in an under-funded program, and that would lead to a call from Penske or Newman-Haas or Chip Ganassi, but I could now see that was never going to happen.
That really scared me. But it did lead to a bend in the road and racing in IMSA, so some fear is not a bad thing.
P.S. – If you’ve never listened to Mark Knopfler’s song, Speedway at Nazareth, you must (Knopfler is a huge race enthusiast, and races historic cars at Goodwood) – especially if you’re any kind of Indy car racing fan. It tells the story of a season of racing on the Indy car circuit, and it brings back big memories for me… some good, some not so good.
Nazareth is an especially not-so-good memory, but still, Knopfler’s song is great. It’s what inspired me to write this piece.
Lyrics: Speedway at Nazareth
After two thousand came two thousand and one
To be the new champions we were there for to run
From springtime in Arizona till the fall in Monterey
And the raceways were the battlefields and we fought 'em all the wayWas at Phoenix in the morning I had a wake-up call
She went around without a warning put me in the wall
I drove Long Beach, California with three cracked vertebrae
And we went on to Indianapolis, Indiana in MayWell the Brickyard's there to crucify anyone who will not learn
I climbed a mountain to qualify I went flat through the turns
But I was down in the might-have-beens and an old pal good as died
And I sat down in Gasoline Alley and I criedWell we were in at the kill again on the Milwaukee Mile
And in June up in Michigan we were robbed at Belle Isle
Then it was on to Portland, Oregon for the G.I. Joe
And I'd blown off almost everyone when my motor let goNew England, Ontario we died in the dirt
Those walls from mid-Ohio to Toronto they hurt
So we came to Road America where we burned up at the lake
But at the speedway at Nazareth I made no mistake
Great story Ross, certainly reveals your humanity! Thanks so much for sharing. No wonder Mark Knopler’s song takes you back. I’ve loved that song for a long time but never heard that live version with Emmylou Harris before. Excellent! Again, thanks for sharing.
This should be required reading for anyone who ever watched a race and thought the guys at the back just couldn’t hack it.