Racing in the rain is the great equalizer, a place where the driver's art matters more than the latest car or the most horsepower. Rain races are fun for the spectator, or race worker, because a lot more people screw up.
The reasons are simple. I have only a tiny bit of experience in the wet and that in RWD car with a welded differential. Which is to say no differential at all. The only way to make the car go would be to dirt track it around, and I didn't have the experience to do that. Cornering speeds are reduced. Braking distances skyrocket.. And with a higher powered cars you can have problems putting down all that power. I love GT-1 cars, but I'm sure they're beasts in the wet (if non-beastliness can be ascribed to any car with 700 HP and monster torque)
A case in point came this weekend at my region's national race at Mid Ohio. I was on the race committee, which means that I get my name on the Entry Form and I get to do whatever needs doing. Like singing the National Anthem, for instance, which I was thankful to pull off. But for me the real story was my friend Phil Alspach.
Phil races a D sports racer. D sports racers are small, lightweight pure race cars that can lap amazingly quickly because they don't weigh hardly anything, and because they are pure race cars. Long control arms, inboard shocks, and so on. All the technology in racing`may be used.. It's an increasing popular class because they are so fast and because motorcycle engines offer inexpensive power. Motorcycle engines don't produce much torque, but their short stroke and twin cam design allows them to rev to high heaven. Which means you can get a lightweight motor that will put out 170 HP very reliably for $3K. As race motors go that's dirt cheap. In GT you'd have a hard time right getting a cylinder head for that kind of money. A lot of DSR's were home built tube frame jobs. For many racers the thrill fo building the car almost matches the thrill of racing it.
Low engine costs and high speed brought a bunch of new competitors and the class swelled. The chassis manufacturers noticed. Several new commercial chassis have recently come on the market, the most prominent being the Stohr chassis. A Stohr costs $30K, (plus motor). Being a commercial piece, it employs all the tricks that a professional chassis manufacturer brings to the game, especially complete engineering and extensive testing. A Stohr is a very sweet car. But the cost of winning has now skyrocketed, with little end in sight. Titanium suspension parts are starting to appear in DSR.
Phil races an older chassis, an Ocelot. Twenty, even ten years ago, it was a pretty hot piece. But it employs technology way, way behind the Stohr's, and worse, it's 300 pounds overweight. Three hundred pounds is almost 40% of the legal minimum weight with driver, an enormous penalty. Phil can't afford radically built engines, so he runs near stock 1100cc Kawasakis. HIs tires are hand-me-downs from John Fergus. Phil can't afford to drop $800 on tires every weekend. He can't afford a 'built' motor that might be worth an extra 30 or 40 horsepower and would blow up twice as often.
What that means is that on most national weekends Phil tools around at the back, with the other guys with old or home built cars while the guys with Stohr's or other modern machines and bigger budgets blow on by. Phil sort of accepts this, but he is a racer, and racers hate to be slow. Getting lapped preys on the psyche. Slow makes people even more conservative. Why run on the ragged edge for 14th? But on this Sunday it rained.
Crew chiefs don't mind a downpour that much. If you know it's going to rain, you put on rains and soften the suspension. They love sunny days. You don't have to make a decision. What they hate the most are the times when no one is sure what Mother Nature is going to do. Phil raced the first session after lunch. The last session before lunch began dry, but ended in a downpour. Most the drivers went out on slicks. Which meant they were going far slower than I could in my Focus on street tires. Mason Workman is a very talented guy, and he made amazing time for the first sixteen laps on slicks. Unfortunately his talent ran out on the 17th and he performed a June Taylor dancers routine at several corners, giving up the win.
It was overcast after lunch, and while it stopped raining the track was still wet. Phil chose to go out on wets while most of the fast guys figured the track would dry and chose slicks. It dried all right, but not for a long time. Phil's car may be old, heavy and underpowered, but he had the right tires for the conditions and something else that really helps in the rain: years of experience. On this day the old, wiry veteran could keep up with the kids. In the corners he was faster. Phil smelled blood, and began driving with the will of sharks in a feeding frenzy. I've never seen him push that hard or well, and he never went off. One of the new cars pipped him, but not by much. If the rain had resumed Phil would have held on. A whole lot of more modern, lighter, more powerful cars got left behind. Phil even lapped some of the guys who normally lap him..
In a month or two, Sports Car will print the results of this race. Phil Alspach finished second in a field of nine DSRs most twenty years younger than his, with budgets one or two zeros higher. People will read the results and wonder what happened. What happened was the rain. Rain is the great equalizer. And on this day a wily, old veteran in a vintage eligible car showed a bunch of young, rich pups his tail.