NASCAR/Racing Blog

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Category: Motorsports

Praise the drivers and pass the ibuprofen

It's been five days and the stiffness is gone, the bruises have faded and the anger whenever I hear someone say race car drivers aren't athletes is as fresh as ever.

All I did was drive a go kart on a tight, little, 40 mile-per-hour top speed, indoor road course. I shared a kart with a friend named Rich in one of Kart2Kart's monthly two-hour endurance races last Thursday.

That means we swapped in and out of the kart for half-hour shifts. After 227 laps, we finished a mediocre eighth out of 13 karts. We watched the winners, Tim Hyland, 45, of Warren, Allison Singer, 23, of Warren, Massimo Porretta, 28, of Macomb Township and Chris Eddy, 25, of Shelby Township, pass us seven times.

Gosh, that sounds easy doesn't it? Yeah, to anybody who's never raced a motor vehicle!

Motor racing is an incredibly physical sport whether it's on four wheels or two, on pavement or dirt, on water or in the air. In all of its forms, motor sports require precision while under physical and mental strain. Try it for two hours at a time in something as simple as a go kart and it makes you marvel at how NASCAR and Indy Racing League drivers can withstand much higher forces for much, much longer periods.

I've been blessed through the years with the opportunity to drive real racing machines on the grass roots level, on ovals, drag strips, road courses, and motocross circuits.

But it's a treat to have a place like Kart2Kart on Van Dyke in Sterling Heights available to get an occasional racing fix at minimal cost.

Managers at K2K have earned a solid reputation over the last eight years by providing go karts that are fast enough to give a real racing feel, while safe enough to keep from losing it all to the liability lawyers. Real race drivers play there alongside regular folks and engineers and designers from the Big Three automakers.

Rich and I weren't the slowest team out there Thursday. Until the closing laps, we had posted the second fastest single lap time. But we did make our share of mistakes.

Racing is so much more than going fast. It's about concentration and consistency. It's about being able to hit your marks, turn-after-turn, lap after lap. Late into a shift, the oxygen-starved, muscle-aching, la-la-land you enter while distance running on foot can result in your most grooved performance or a jumbled mess.

Miss one turn and it throws off the next and ruins a lap -- or worse. I bruised my ribs when I missed the proper line entering a turn Thursday and slapped one of the rubber walls on exit. It was a glancing blow that probably cost half a second, but it tossed me like a rag doll and had me yelling at myself inside my helmet. Amazing how loud your voice can get inside a full-face racing helmet.

These races also give a taste of the challenge faced by those guys (and gals) you watch on TV when it comes to keeping your cool in the heat of competition. We all saw Jamie McMurray tangle with Kyle Bush in the middle of that race at Talladega Sunday. That wasn't an accidental bump. And McMurray isn't the only one upset with the younger Bush's abrupt style on the track.

I've seen some heated arguments at K2K too, and in the past, I've had the fine corner marshals hold me in the pits as a penalty for a less than subtle act of retaliation. That one was worth it though.

On Thursday, I had a spirited race through most of my second half-hour stint with a guy whose kart was faster than mine on the straights, but slower through the turns. I'd pass him in a corner and he'd pass me back on the next straight. I got a lot of enthusiastic and funny hand gestures from my co-driver watching from next to the track. Our karts also bumped often enough to get a warning sign from the marshals.

But, at the end of the race, I made sure that other driver was the first guy I greeted with a smile, a slap on the back and congratulations for being so tenacious. He made the whole race worth while.