Horton Autosport battles the Virginia heat, making art in the process!
Last weekend the Horton Autosport team tested our #57 Porsche 911 at the amazing Virginia International Raceway located a stone’s throw from the North Carolina border. The countryside, the hospitality, the food, and the track were all spectacular! The one thing that wasn’t, however, was the weather. Having grown up in Bakersfield, CA I’m used to dealing with temperatures that normally fall closer to cleaning your oven rather than providing an environment suitable to sustain human life. And even with that resume I found myself totally unprepared for the miserable heat that we experienced last weekend! We learned a lot about our car in two days of testing. A car which is still a fairly new platform for us, having contested only 5 races so far. While our times showed the objective merits of our labor, we left Virginia with a token of subjective appreciation as well – confirming something I had thought for a while: Motorsport is art!
The Porsche Club of America was our host this past weekend and while it was just our second PCA event, we always feel very welcomed by the competitors and staff. John Horton made sure everything was absolutely perfect on the car, while I occupied myself with wiping the bugs off the front bumper after every session. Wright Motorsports was also there in support of our testing effort, supplying equipment and expertise during our test. Owner John Wright is a long-time Porsche racer and team owner who always surprises us with his insight, usually sprinkled in between jokes and funny race stories. Wright Motorsports driver, BJ Zacharias was also on hand to help interpret data, brainstorm and of course add his own banter to the John & John show. BJ took a few test laps with Truspeed owner Rob Morgan’s car and we were all excited to see the #46 car running strong with its sexy new bodywork! *More to come on that after The Glen!
Testing race cars is a tedious process. Often times changes are made to the car just to test a “what if” scenario, not something normally tackled during our normal race weekends. As a driver it is a pleasure and a pain. Forcing yourself to concentrate on minute handling characteristics and possible improvements is very challenging, but because we don’t have to worry about competitors beating us if we make a wrong decision there is some extra brainpower to focus on the handling. Test days are usually a little more casual in appearance. The car can get a little dirty (although I ache inside at the thought) and you can wear whatever you want (board shorts in John’s and my case) without worrying about looking bad in front of fans or sponsors. We finished our final session very pleased with the handling and performance of the car. We completed our checklist of items we needed to test and gained valuable information along the way. Doubly impressive was the car’s resilience to the heat. Our Neo Synthetic fluids kept the engine, transmission and even our brakes functioning at full potential despite natures best attempts to park our Porsche. I treated the car to a nice wax Saturday evening which gave me a great sense of relief after staring at the bug and tar marks for two days.
Sunday morning we awoke to another day of blistering Virginia heat, but this time we were doing chores instead of racing around the 17 turn, three and a quarter mile race track. The equipment it takes to support one professional race car is immense. The tools are just the tip of the iceberg. Spares which include everything from nuts & bolts to body panels in case something really goes bad all have to travel with the car. The rig itself consists of a Freightliner toterhome (half semi-truck, half motorhome) pulling a 38′ trailer filled to the brim with car parts, tools, hardware and materials to support the car, fluids, tents, wheels/tires, rags, nitrogen bottles, vacuums, carts, straps, covers, fixtures, gauges, etc… it’s a rolling shop. Quite honestly the car is the simplest part of the whole puzzle. Organizing and packing it all is quite a mad science.
As I dove into our garage Sunday morning, in an attempt to avoid the intense heat which nearly combusted my hair gel, I found some cool hardware sitting on top of our car. We had missed the banquet Saturday night due to my waxing ritual and in doing so apparently missed out on accepting an award, sweet! And thanks to the PCA competitor who left it for me to find the next morning, it was like Christmas at the race track! Just a little warmer. As I pulled what looked to be a plaque out of its wrapping, I discovered that we had been awarded, in my opinion, the best award PCA gives out at its events. The “Workers Choice” award is given to the participant who appeals most to the corner workers, the guys and gals that keep us safe by displaying informative flags at each corner and who also help us in emergency situations. I had heard about the award at my first PCA event earlier in the year and thought to myself “I want that!”. Well thank you corner workers, I am extremely honored that you liked our car and possibly even the way it was driven. It may have helped that I’m always careful to wave to the guys and gals at every corner who are there for our safety, maybe all that sucking up worked!
Receiving this award has lead me down a little yet necessary tangent… I have argued in the past and again just the other day while at the coin laundry in Danville, Virginia that motorsport is art! The act of engineering, building and improving a mechanical device, in this case a race car, is without a doubt a form of art! [John Horton was definitely agreeing with that sentiment while feeding the dryer more quarters]. The act of driving it is also art, requiring both creativity and mathematical discipline to be as fast as possible. Motorsports, like all sports (except for figure skating and drifting) are judged objectively by a measuring device such as time, distance or score. It’s hard to argue a case for art being present when things are judged in that manner. However, now that someone has told us in the form of a subjective award that they like our “piece”, I’m extremely confident in my argument that motorsport is art!
Anyways, John H. is back at John W.’s shop preparing our #57 for the Watkins Glen race July 3rd. We’re all pretty anxious to get out on the track in a few short days. We’ll meet up with the Truspeed gang and prepare to do battle in another round of World Challenge “Sports Car Wars” in upstate New York. I’ve been thinking about this coming weekend nonstop since Mosport, hoping to keep our momentum and see the podium again. Maybe during the process somebody will admire our artwork.
