Story by Byron Hurd. Photos by the author, Dave Everest, and an uncredited S:S:L team member.

Ayrton Senna once said he had no idols. He admired only the three things mentioned in the title of this piece. As human beings, we prove time and again that adversity can more quickly extract them from us than any other condition. If you ask me though, adversity, at least as an abstract, is incredibly played-out. Go watch a college football game this weekend and you’ll see what I mean. A freshman quarterback has to prove his merit in the face of adversity. Every third athlete has come from a background of adversity. The 24-year-old, super-super-senior wide receiver is more mature than his teammates because he’s encountered ‘adversity.’ Here’s a hint: He’s more mature because he’s 24, and not passing his Chem 200 final because he was out banging cheerleaders until 4:00 a.m. is not evidence of overcoming adversity. Now that I think about it, aspiring sports journos: Please stop using that damned word. Either buy a thesaurus or bite the bullet on that sports management degree. We all know it’s your backup, anyway.

The point? **** happens. And when it happens, you either step up or piss off. That’s the standard by which the real world measures character, and the real world came a-knocking many times this year for Green Baron Motor Sports. This season wasn’t glamorous — Hell, at times, it was barely dignified — but it was a test of personality and commitment.

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Yes, due to more slow news weeks and…other things beyond our control, we missed last week’s podcast. No worries, we’re back and strong as ever with this week’s offering. On the docket for arraignment this week is some great news from GM (finally) on the Chevrolet Volt and Pontiac G8 GXP, more typically GM bad news about the Pontiac G3, or Chevrolet Aveo if you have eyes, Porsche continues to conquer VW through the Death of Ten-Thousand Cuts technique, pointless idle discussion of Formula 1, and the most technologically advanced method of singeing bread in this week’s Useless Automotive Tchotchke. Share and Enjoy™.

 

 SSL Radio 9/24/08 [12:51m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Story by Jack Baruth

It’s one of my favorite driving memories: Years ago, as my BMW 330i hammers down the front straight at Mosport, a shape appears in my rearview mirror. Purple. Frog-eyed. Fast. With a flick and a furious gargle of exhaust, the shape flashes by. Porsche. 964 Turbo. Three. Point. Six. The ultra-rare, last-of-the-line Turbos. We’re nose to tail at the entrance to the first turn. Five-foot flames burst from the Porsche’s twin tips as the driver snags his final downshift. I can see the exaggerated slip of the front wheels followed by the characteristic sag-and-lift that precedes every truly vicious corner entry in a rear-engined street Porsche. And then, the calm, blasé voice of my instructor (and later, fellow competitor) Brian:

“Ignore that, thank you. Ignore the Nine Eleven. He has a different line.”

A different line? What does that mean? How can cars have different lines? Isn’t there just one line, and don’t we call it “The Line” for just that reason? Why is his line different? With no time to debate at the beginning of a famously fast and tricky corner, I followed Brian’s instructions and was rewarded with another reasonably competent lap, but that particular incident burned in my mind for long afterwards. If my Bimmer had a line, and that Porsche had a line… were those the only two lines to be had? Were Nine Elevens the only cars that had different lines? Did mid-engined cars have a different line? What’s the “school line” about which I’d heard so much at Mid-Ohio? Who kept track of all the lines? Could they change? It felt as if I had stepped out over an abyss. As the Zen phrase says, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s there are few.” There were certainly many possibilities in my mind at that point.

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Story by Jack Baruth

The good news from today’s NASA National Championships can all be seen in the photo: I’m alive and the #187 Neon doesn’t have a scratch on it. That’s the end of the good news.

The bad news can also be seen in the photo. Notice the front wheel; it’s different. That’s because, during the pace car “out lap” of the championship race, a fifty-cent tire valve failed and deflated our left front tire. We had no choice but to dash into the pits - but this ain’t NASCAR, and we don’t change tires in the pits. While the race started for the other seventeen cars in the “Performance Touring E” class, I drove to the garage where the crew performed a thirty-second tire change. I rejoined the race two and a half laps down.

Imagine the heartbreak, then, to find out that I could easily keep pace with the class leaders as they battled for position ahead. We’d have had solid heat for the front-runners today, but instead I was stuck trying to unlap myself. When a twenty-minute Safety Car period occurred just short of the halfway point, allowing the leaders to come back around to my back bumper, I realized that we were done for the year.

With ten minutes left to go in the race, I decided to push the car to its limits - but the limit can be a tricky thing with mismatched tires, and I soon found myself sailing off-track into the grass and losing all the time I’d gained in my charge. We finished seventeenth of eighteen cars.

Our friends in the Pakistan Express team finished a respectable fourth despite blowing a head gasket on the final lap, and Michael Mills finished third in the German Touring Series race. So the news wasn’t bad all-around. We returned home to find that Hurricane Ike had basically shut off the power - so once my laptop’s battery winds down, we’ll have nothing to do but sit in the dark.

On days like this, Formula One drivers always say “For sure, it was a day to forget.” So there you have it. We showed our pace over the course of the week in both wet and dry conditions, but when it mattered we were defeated by a fifty-cent tire valve. What can you do? A day to forget, for sure.

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Story by Jack Baruth

Ah yes, the ladies love Green Baron Motorsports - and so does Lady Luck. The forecast this morning looked bad: with temperatures rising and the track drying off, our Performance Touring “E” Qualifying Race #2 would be much tougher than yesterday’s wet-track romp. The #187 Neon just doesn’t quite have the juice to keep up with the fastest of our competition, and one of our toughest competitors - the Pakistan Express #786 Civic - would be returning from the body shop in time to start from the back of the grid.

We qualified eighth of sixteen drivers in a traffic-filled short qualifying-for-the-qualifying session, but when the green flag flew I hammered down and brought our little Neon home in fifth place of eighteen cars which started the race, pausing only to move over for our garagemate Brian in the PakExpress Civic. Brian ran from 16th place to second - it was amazing, and he set the fastest time of the race along the way.

With two fifth-place finishes (yesterday’s yellow-flag passer was not seriously penalized) we’ll be starting the National Championship race in third place out of eighteen cars. How? Well, it turns out that there are good rain drivers, and good dry-weather drivers, but not too many folks who can do both. Since we’re okay at both, our point total was relatively low compared to the competition.

Tomorrow’s when they hand out the trophies, so we’ll see - but I’m very pleased. Third place out of eighteen in our brand-new Neon. What’s not to like? Cross your fingers for us!

Quick update: Today was the first of two qualifying race days for Sunday’s championship race. The Green Baron Motorsports Neon qualified in fourth place out of 14 thanks to my remarkably light and deft touch in the rain. The competition had Hoosier Rains; we had Toyo R888s, but with a little luck we were still able to get a decent qualifying run.

In the race, we fell back to seventh place after four hard-fought laps. I literally couldn’t figure out how my competition was carrying so much speed into Turn Six… but when two of the cars ahead of me went off the track at full speed, hitting each other and tossing bodywork into the air, as the guy behind me brake-locked right into my rear bumper, I realized that nobody could carry that much speed. A little bit of luck allowed me to make the turn safely in full Tokyo Drift mode while the guy behind me ran off into “China Beach” as well.

That put us in fifth… but wait! It turns out that the fellow who made a stirring run from eighth place to victory did it mostly by passing other cars under yellow-flag conditions. That’s a no-no. So we’re probably in fourth place as of tonight.

The two cars which hit in China Beach, piloted by Kevin Fandozzi and our friend/garagemate Faisal Ahmad, are on the way to emergency sessions on frame racks. They’ll be back in time to race tomorrow, as crazy as that sounds!

The good news: it’s going to keep raining. We don’t have the power to win this Championship - but in the rain, we might have the luck. Keep your fingers crossed!

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Story by Jack Baruth

We’ll make this quick: It’s time for the 2008 NASA National Championships, and your Speed:Sport:Life team is there to provide the appropriate amount of schadenfreude for our readers and fans. Live timing and scoring can be found throughout the day at

http://drivenasa.com/liveresults/

so if you’re bored beyond belief, why not check it out? This year, the site is represented by the #187 PTE car run by yours truly, a Lapis Blue 1995 Plymouth Neon Sport, and the #416 GTS-5 BMW M3 of MSR Houston Director of Track Operations Michael Mills.

Today’s been a tough, but interesting, day. During the morning session, I was on the way to our fastest-ever time, predicted by my on-board Traqmate as a 1:44.7, when I went off backwards at Turn 11 and thoroughly dusted-up our valiant little Plymouth. (As opposed to our little Plymouth Valiant. Get it?) The second session started off nearly as discouragingly when I ruined our Hankook race tires by flat-spotting them at the entrance to Mid-Ohio’s Carousel turn. Luckily we had a brand-new set of Hoosier R6es from Phil’s Tire Service, so we spent the last session of the day carefully scrubbing them in. Despite my inability to put together a really top-notch lap in any of these sessions, we’re still hovering around the middle of the timesheets. At the end of the evening, we discovered that my “off” had reset our rear camber to zero. If we can fix that tomorrow and realign the car, we should be able to ride our new Hoosiers into the 1:44 range - not enough to win, but enough to see the edge of the podium if our luck holds.

Friday and Saturday are the qualifying races. These six-lap scrambles will determine where we start for Sunday’s championship race, which should run about eighteen laps or forty minutes, whichever comes first. There’s rain on the horizon, which could reshuffle the competitive deck as thoroughly as it did for this past weekend’s F1 race.

Meanwhile, Michael Mills has been learning Mid-Ohio. He’s not yet where he wants to be, time-wise, but he’s seeing high speeds on the back straight and we expect he’ll pull within sniffing distance of the leaders tomorrow. It would be unwise to count him out of the running just yet.

More details as we have them. In the meantime, cross your fingers!

Apparently, everyone’s decided to take the few weeks leading up to the Paris Motor Show off, as we once again have something of a dearth of news to bring to you listeners this week. All we have are the paltry offerings of a very minor preview of the new Honda Insight hybrid, some confirmed facts about the new Ford Focus RS, the US sales figures for the month of August and GM’s potential attempt to improve their place on it, a few environmental news tidbits and Lewis Hamilton topless in this week’s Useless Automotive Tchotchke. Oh, and he’s selling some shoes too, as you can see below the jump. Share and Enjoy™.

 

 SSL Radio 9/08/08 [7:52m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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As the title image for this week’s podcast indicates, we have some very exciting news this week about the KTM X-Bow. The Austrian motorcycle and now track-day weapons manufacturer announced last week that they will be working to bring the X-Bow to North America. Also featured this week are some of the more important performance figures for the Cadillac CTS-V, a three-pack of model news disappointment, Ford gets overtaken again in the sales rankings, I once again go on for far too long about the American Le Mans Series (I put the bulk of my ramblings beneath the jump if you decide to skip them in the podcast), and our first set of actual aftermarket performance parts in this week’s Useless Automotive Tchotchke. Share and Enjoy™.

 

 SSL Radio 9/01/08 [15:34m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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