So, it's officially summer, and I had the first grilled burgers of the new season last night, sitting on the deck, new sunburn simmering not too unpleasantly away from the day spent out in the sun indulging in one of my favorite soothing activities: washing and waxing my street vehicle. I'm not a fanatic about the vehicle itself, (which happens to be a beautiful white-on-black 2000 Pontiac Trans Am) but more it's I'm a fan of having something to take care of. To baby, and take pride in. So I spent the day washing/waxing and primping. There's really not much better than sweating it out while reveling in something you truly love. Which brings me back to our race cars. Jessica Rabbit, the blue and white doll I wrecked at limerock last year, and the aptly named “Batmobile” everyone has gotten used to seeing me throw around this season. There is no place on Earth I've faced greater challenges, with more confidence and less failure on the planet than in the cockpit of a race car. My office. My home.

There simply isn't a workout for the brain around that compares to what driving a race car is. Plenty of people throw down on crossword puzzles, Sudoku, or are constantly gauging odds and flipping through ratios, percentages and probabilities while playing a hand of poker. All are good workouts for the brain, critical thinking skills, logic. These all work in the same way race car driving does. At first it's a struggle. Things seem random, patterns are absent. Over time the basics become second nature as you focus on smaller and smaller details in order to wring another small leap of performance out of the vehicle, but more importantly and much more challenging, yourself as well. Here is where the comparisons fall away and you realize what a truly different BEAST speed is. It takes someone a bit special, and a little bit loony-in-the-head to commit to out braking another person at the end of Road Atlanta's back straight, or to make a move in the carousel at Road America. And it's fitting that they say, to paraphrase; “what makes someone crazy is that they don't KNOW they're crazy.” Well that's what repetition does. After a while out braking the guy in front of you, or running less than inches from the rear wing in front of you at 140mph is routine. All part of the game. You cease to marvel at the craziness of what you're doing and only appreciate the clinical, side. The cause-and-effect game of “if I make my move here, what are the odds that horrifying crash happens as opposed to making it?” And you don't even bat an eye at the prospect of the crash hurting you, you only don't want that because it takes you out of the race, and of course to win you first must finish.

It's a very strange game of cat and mouse in the psyche because emotions mean mistakes. Fear or anger is a line that once crossed, will NEVER progress you. Now if you could ever ride along in my helmet, you certainly hear what would be easily misconstrued as anger. I scream at myself from time to time, in the no-bullshit voice you use when the dog's gotten into the garbage. But this is not anger. It's aggression, and aggression is not an emotion. Aggression is a switch. Emotion clouds your judgement, aggression channels it, focuses and aims it. It doesn't stand in the way of your thought process as much as it steers it in a certain direction. However.

Not to get too mystical, or “new-age” hipster with this next paragraph where I completely contradict everything I just said, but emotion plays an important part in what we do as well. It just has to be handled correctly. I feel a certain sense of peace when I get in a car I am comfortable with. You build a relationship with a car, and even to some extent, the tracks you race on. (this was much more prevalent when I was running ovals, road courses to me feel a little soulless, they communicate with you less for some reason. It's hard to explain) After the checkered flag falls I will often reach up and give the dash a pat and thank the car for getting myself through what is in “real world standards” basically an unthinkable “level of crazy” experience. Driving a lot of the time also has a LOT to do with feel. Sometimes a move will be right in front of the you, door open, but it doesn't feel right. You don't know why but something tells you it isn't the right time to do this. You have to be open to such things, and I don't think a purely logical calculated mind would get this message. That's why wrecks happen. Somebody missed the memo from the universe saying “not now.” So here is the cat and mouse in the psyche. The marrying of natural emotion with the robotic precision required to excel at driving race cars. I do it by keeping all my senses, including the sixth one, if I can, as open as possible to all information around me.

Which is why spending a day around a quiet engine, washing and waxing is such a wonderfully relaxing experience. It is the flip side of the car world. The rest from the fight. There's no high stakes, it's just time to relax, and recharge. Beer, burgers and one glistening T/A in the twilight.

-Tim

#06, SMR driver