Category: Spa-Francorchamps

Unbelievable

I spend a good proportion of my free weekends running around race tracks, merrily tweeting about my adventures. But don’t get me wrong, I don’t simply sling everything that happens onto social media. I apply a light form of censure: I try not to post messages that lose their appropriate context when you reduce them to 140 characters and become ambiguous – or simply incomprehensible. I also deliberately don’t write about things that are so utterly ridiculous that, if I were to strip them of their details and turn them into an ultrashort tweet, readers probably wouldn’t believe they had actually happened. I was talking this practice over with a friend last week and she said it was a shame that my most bonkers stories never make it onto the web. Initially I disagreed with her, but today I’m wondering if the odd events that don’t work as tweets could perhaps work as a blog post, since a blog allows room for contextualisation. Maybe that concept is worth a test run. So I hereby present…

The Top Three of Odd Things That Really Happened in 2016 But Seemed Too Improbable When Written Down in 140 Characters!

3. Size Matters
In the spring I attended the Blancpain GT Sprint Cup at the Nürburgring. That weekend, the Sprint Cup was a support series for the Truck GP. I’d never before seen a truck race and I’d definitely never shared a race track with truck fans. I wasn’t worried about it though. What could possibly happen? It’s not as if truck racing is a big deal or anything, right? WRONG. Truck racing is HUGE. It attracts thousands of super-enthusiastic fans, who outnumbered the GT fans by far all throughout the weekend and at times made me feel a bit isolated, because they had their own fan culture which I didn’t truly understand. However, it turned out that this was a mutual sentiment. When the Blancpain GT cars first hit the track on Saturday morning, immediately after the truck practice had finished, I overheard one of the truck fans saying: “Aaaaaw, look how cute! Aren’t those GT cars SMALL?!”

2. My Little Pony Rocks
During one of the VLN races, my dad and I shared a row of chairs on one of the grandstands with another father and daughter. The two dads quickly got talking about photography and that left me with the other daughter – which was slightly problematic as she was three years old and I’m absolutely horrible with toddlers. So we ended up staring at each other uncomfortably, until I decided to point out the girl’s My Little Pony vest. “That’s cool!” I said. Just then a grumpy man walked passed us, muttering that it was not cool, just “something stupid for kids”. In a reflex I unzipped my backpack and pulled out my My Little Pony travel wallet. I waved it defiantly at the man, who shrugged his shoulders and walked on. Obviously furious, the little girl then climbed on her chair and… flipped the tiniest bird ever to be flipped at a race track, right at the grumpy man’s back. I’m still disappointed he didn’t see it! (And also relieved the fathers didn’t see it either. I probably would’ve gotten blamed.)

1. Head to Head
I have an annoying habit of typing my tweets while walking. It’s not difficult to do, not even in a paddock, as long as you keep a wary eye on what’s beside and in front of you. You don’t want to be hit by a race car, after all. Over the past seasons I’ve pretty much perfected the technique and I never run into trouble. Well, never? Once. Last May, during the 24 Hours of Spa-weekend, I literally ran into trouble when trouble didn’t come from the side or the front (where I was watching!), but from above. I was walking and tweeting along a support series pre grid, which was located in the paddock at the foot of Eau Rouge, being perfectly aware of the exact locations of all the cars and moving engineers to my left, right and front. Unfortunately, I was also perfectly oblivious to the push-out extension of the Garage 59 team truck that was hanging level with my forehead. I walked into it with a surprisingly loud BANG, almost fell backwards due to the backlash, and saw stars for a few seconds. The moment I regained my bearings, I felt embarrassed. I was surrounded by at least 100 people. How stupid an idiot would they think I was?! And that’s when I realised. Despite the bang, the show and the drama, nobody was looking in my direction. Nobody was pointing at me. Nobody was even laughing. They were all so interested in the pre grid, THAT NOBODY HAD NOTICED. The relief I felt was enormous. (FYI: so was the bump on my forehead.)

The Naughty Audi

He leans against the tow truck. The legs of his orange jumpsuit and his shoes are caked in mud. His hands are covered in grime. Given that he’s had an incredibly long day, it’s not surprising he looks like he’s been through the weather. He had to report in to the circuit at the crack of dawn, mainly to be given the same set of safety instructions he’s already been given a hundred times before. Still, you can never be too careful with safety. So even though he knew he probably wouldn’t hear anything new, he crammed himself into the tiny conference room, along with all his colleagues, to attend the run-through of the emergency procedures.

He’s glad he hasn’t had any need to put those procedures into practice today. Despite the considerable length of this endurance race, it’s been a quiet day for post 29. (In as far as a day filled with roaring WEC engines can be called ‘quiet’, that is.) However, if anyone had gotten into trouble, he and his colleagues would’ve been ready to help. That’s what marshalls are for. Without people like him, motorsport wouldn’t even exist – and he knows it. A smile forms around his lips. The only thing better than doing something you like, is doing something that matters.

Suddenly his daydream’s interrupted by an LMP1 car approaching La Source. It’s the race-winning Audi 7 that’s just taken the chequered flag. The car confuses him. It has no visible damage, but even so his gut feeling tells him something’s wrong. Then it comes to him. The Audi’s going too fast. Victory laps are forbidden at Spa, so the LMP1 should’ve slowed down by now to prepare itself for making a sharp U-turn coming out of La Source to steer itself back into the paddock. But it hasn’t. Not even a little. It has just hit the apex and is now steering into the corner using the racing line. This is going wrong. The driver needs to be stopped.

It seems his fellow marshalls have come to the same conclusion. As one man, they start to move towards the track. Some rush through the small opening in the tyre wall. Others jump over the catch fence. As fast as their legs can carry them they run across the run-off tarmac, looking somewhat like a herd of overenthusiastic orange minions attempting to close the distance between them and a pile of moving bananas. Most of them are holding objects above their heads. He himself has gotten hold of a white flag and he waves it frantically through the air, hoping to catch the driver’s attention. By now the Audi has rounded the corner. If he runs fast enough, maybe he can block its path. He speeds up, but it’s not use. When he’s still some meters away from the track, the Audi shoots passed him.

When he realises he’s too late, he teeters to a stop. In disbelief he stares at the Audi as it’s gearing towards Eau Rouge. Helpless, he waves his flag above his head one last time. Behind him his colleagues are beginning to block the track to make sure that no other cars can slip through illegally, but he can’t tear his eyes away from the Audi yet. He watches as it shoots up the hill, shrinks into a tiny dot, and disappears behind the horizon. Sadly he lowers his flag. He can’t believe this just happened. The moment he comes home he’s going to write up a new emergency procedure, one designed especially to deal with naughty race-car drivers.