Pressdog.com

Pressdog goes Behind the Pit Wall
at the IRL Race at Chicagoland

By Bill Zahren
(Posted 9/21/05)

Attention fellow Indy Racing League freaks: Thanks to my friend, Lou Ann Baker, PR Czarina for Dreyer and Reinbold Racing, pressdog went "behind the pit wall" during the IRL race at Chicagoland Sept. 10 and 11 and tackled the key issues:

What's the scene like back there? Give us some "color."

The garage area is like a big, concrete, extremely clean RV park minus the dead grass and swimming pool of questionable cleanliness. All the "haulers" are parked next to each other in a couple of rows. The DRR hauler was sandwiched between the Ethanol/Hemelgarn Racing hauler and the Vision Racing hauler.

You get the feeling that these people all know each other, kind of like retirees who park their RVs in the same spot and next to the same people every summer. "Hey, how ya doing, Marge? Good to see you. How're the kids? Still having that gout trouble?" That kind of stuff. Very cordial. Very familial. They don't hang out and drink beer and grill brats though, because there's work to be done. But they do exchange the occasional pleasantries and help each other out when they can.

What about the garages? Cool?

Oh yeah. They're cool. The car, of course, is the star of the garage show. It's quarter-mee-yun-dollar pinnacle of vehicular impracticality with very tight seating for one, no air conditioning, no power steering, no reverse gear, no cup holders and no starter. Indy cars are very modular and come apart in about four places. Cars are often sitting in pieces in the garage. The car is designed to be very strong and very light, yet break apart in an accident. By busting up, the car - rather than the driver - absorbs and dissipates the energy of a 200-mph crash rather.

The wings, especially, are cool. For the non-IRL freaks out there, the car's wings work like airplane wings only in reverse. Rather than lifting the craft (like they do on an airplane) the air flowing over the wings pushes the car down. Balancing engine power with wing angle and track banking (and about 192 other factors) allows the car to go 215 mph around a corner. Too much wing (and therefore too much downforce) and your car is too slow to win. Not enough wing (and not enough downforce) and you risk going end-over-end down the track. Fine line. The drivers are awesome, but some of the biggest stars of the IRL are the engineers who balance all these factors.

One thing you're not going to find in an IRL garage is visible grease and oil. A big reason for that is that most teams aren't allowed to open the engine. They get it from Toyota, Chevrolet or Honda and bolt it in. If it breaks, they get a whole new engine and bolt it in. Keep yer wrenches off the engine block!

My father was an auto mechanic, so I've been around auto garages. Lots of oil. Grease. Dust. Eruptions of swearing. Random oily, dead pistons laying on work benches. Not in an IRL garage. You could eat off the floor in the Chicagoland garage. It looks a lot like a tool sales area at Menards.

What's the deal with the IRL drivers, really?

They're small! I'm not making fun of them, because at 5'-8" I tower over virtually nobody. But the average IRL driver is probably about 5'-5" and 150 pounds. Sam Hornish, Jr. is one of the bigger guys and he's maybe 165. Maybe. All very slim and trim. You're used to professional athletes (and drivers are athletes for sure) being huge. But not Indy car drivers. You gotta be to wedge into that little Indy Car. Plus, the heavier the car, the slower you go, so there's big incentive to stay svelte.

Drivers appear to be like anyone else - a range of personalities and styles. My DRR homey Roger Yasukawa is really quiet and low key. The Andretti-Green Four Amigos were often screwing around with each other. I almost got darted by Tony Kanaan on a motor scooter on race day. Then I turned around and there was Dan Wheldon coming on his scooter, followed by Brian Herta. I think they were turning laps with them around the haulers. Many of the drivers have little scooters to get around. So, of course, if you give race drivers scooters what do the do? Race them. Give them golf carts and pretty soon they're trading paint.

Are these drivers, in fact, insane?

Oh hell yes. Especially when the helmet goes on and the motors start. Freaks. I had a chance to ride shotgun around the track with my homey Robbie "Invinci" Buhl (former driver, current co-owner of DRR racing) in a Chevy Impala. So, we're going 126 miles per hour in an Impala and Robbie is talking over his shoulder to the guys in the back seat about what the car is doing, what would be going through a driver's head if we were in a race. All very educational, but I'm a little preoccupied by the APPROACHING WALL. Dude, seriously, no joking around, that wall looks really solid.

But, Robbie has it well in hand and gets us down into the turn. He's saying something about "giving the car its head" or something but I can't make it out because I'm mashed against the front, passenger side door and praying really hard that said door won't bust open. I was pretty sure the doors had been re-enforced. Next thing I know we're out of the turn, Robbie says something about "the start finish line" while pointing at it and we're back into another turn and I'm pressed comic book like against the door again. Driving the laps offered all the challenge of driving to the 7-11 for Robbie. And that was at 128 mph. Add 90 more mph and you're making a lap every 24-25 seconds on the 1.5-mile track. Now add 22 other cars going just as fast. Conclusion: you gotta be demented to do this for a living.

But, yeah, it was a rush. Even at a paltry 128. I can see how you'd get addicted.

Besides being insane, drivers are real people like everyone else. Back when I used to brush up against them as a reporter, I learned that famous people are people who happen to be famous. They still put their pants on one leg at a time, go to the can, and get into pissy moods now and then like everyone else. So if you met them and didn't know they were famous, you'd be all like, "You're actually a human like me." I think when you see a celebrity in person it helps you understand that they're not just an image on a TV or a movie screen, but a real person. And, sometimes, who you think they are based on watching them on TV isn't who they really are, and that can be disappointing.

Yeah, yeah, but what's Danica REALLY like?

Well, she's no Sarah Fisher. Kidding. I kid, because I'm a huge Sarah fan and I'm having trouble letting it go. Anyway, Danica and I sat down and talked for an hour over some margaritas … No. Sorry. Made that up. I saw Danica twice. Once was at an autograph session where, thanks to my connectedness, I stood in the middle of a 20-foot-square rectangle of drivers who were signing (so their backs were too me). I was THREE FEET from Danica Patrick for 50 minutes. I could have reached out and touched her - and been immediately tackled and beaten by the 10 security guys and police officer surrounding her.

Danica is like Elvis and Mia Hamm combined. OK, not quite as big as that, but that's the vibe she gets from fans. She did a great job at the autograph session. I gotta give her a shout out. She smiled at everyone. Seemed happy to be there, signed everything put in front of her, posed for pictures with rabid fans, kept the line moving without seeming in a hurry. Signed "Danica" about 400 times. Luckily she has a first name distinctive enough to allow her to just go with "Danica" which removes about 50% of the work of signing "Danica Patrick." I was impressed how she handled the crush of fans.

The second time I saw Danica was as she came back from a driver's meeting on Sunday morning. I saw her darting through the hauler area entrance with a clot of fans around her. She has to walk fast because if she stops, she'll be engulfed. The woman can't go anywhere without having stuff stuck in her face to sign. Again, she kept moving and signed as much as she could as she walked.

So, I give Danica major props for putting up with it, attracting attention to the league, dealing with the fans in a great way (from what I could see) and doing all the dog-and-pony stuff the IRL asks of her with a smile.

Didn't some guy just about get run over by Danica while coming out of a Spot-a-Pot?

It was technically a car in which Danica was riding. (I could tell Danica wasn't driving because ABC wasn't covering it LIVE.) The three Rahal Letterman drivers (Buddy Rice, Danica Patrick, Vitor Miera) were in the back of a car, driven by persons unknown, leaving the autograph session to go back over to the hauler area. The driver of the car cut it a bit close to a row of Spot-a-Pots just as some guy came out. HELLO, he about had a face full of Honda Accord. Luckily he just went in the Spot-A-Pot or he would have went in his pants.

If the guy did get hit, I bet he would have asked Danica to sign something while waiting for the ambulance. I was with Lou Ann and Roger in a golf cart behind the RL car and saw the whole thing, officer. Luckily it wasn't THAT close.

Moments later Lou Ann got passed on the outside by a cart carrying Scott Sharp (Sir Blocksalot) and Kosuke Matsuura. (Note: Kosuke was the hippest-dressing driver I saw.) Lou Ann, seriously, getting passed on the high side? She claimed the Sharp cart was cheating, going around speed bumps, yada yada, probably had an illegal engine as well. We thought about calling race rules chief Brian Barnhart to file a protest but then let it go.

In what other way were you wired?

I was the official scorer for Dreyer & Reinbold Racing! Sat way up in the tower and represented. Sat right next to an AGR scorer and didn't get into a brawl! But more on that next time. For now, when you think of steel coating, think of DRR sponsor Roll Coater (www.rollcoater.com).

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