The Rough Times of Racing! The failure.

Of all the accidents that I have had, they do not count as failures in anyway.  The go-carting accident was a lack of experience in conditions that were very poor at the time.  But none of them can compare to what happened to me at a race at Firebird East.

I had been racing the Porsche 944, and me and car were not working as one.  I don't know what it was.  By this time I was an experienced racer who had come off of racing two different cars and both those cars where totally different from the other.  But for some reason things were not coming together as quickly, and this did not have my dad happy either.  My dad built this car in about a month with the help of two kids from the neighborhood.  I did not do hard any work on it at all.  For my dad, I think this was to prove to all of the people out there that he really did know Porsche's.  Most of the cars that were out there were basically built by one person, so were a little differently built than most of the others out there, but we were still built to spec levels.

This day I was not comfortable in the car.  One thing that I had a hard time with, was my side mirrors.  They were moving on me.  So I would go to check my mirrors and they were not were I had set them.  Playing with my mirrors caused me to go off the track twice and spin.  I had four spins that race.  The last spin I was trying to adjust the mirrors and as I looked up, I was off the track and I tried to correct it and I was into a spin heading for a workers station.  I stopped sideways about 10 feet from the workers station.  

This really scared me so badly that I made it around the track and into the pits and parked the car.  All I could think off, was that I almost hurt or killed two people because of my actions.  But I just did not have it that day.  I had to get off the track before I killed myself or someone else.  How could I continue running around the track knowing good well, I did not have what it takes to drive that car that day. 

As I talked about before in other blogs about the accidents that I had, I knew what it was like to take a hit and to hit others.  I had spun cars many of times and had many of close calls coming out of the tower turn at Firebird Main or turn 1 or turn 4 at PIR.  But never were I could see the fear in the faces of people that I was close to hitting.  I don't know what would have happened to me if I had hit them.

I had driven enough laps that I was not disqualified from the race, but my dad was very disappointed in my from quitting.  I really hurt me how he reacted, and other there knew the pressures that were on me my dad. We were no longer racing for fun, but for his pride.

We went home and fixed the side mirrors.  I raced a few more times before my mom got sick.  It is hard for a racer to admit that there are days that you just don't have what it takes.  For me I was able to get back in the car and not think about the last race.  And for me that is the only time I  had to take myself out of  a race.

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