Old school crooner Sinatra summed up Sunday’s second Icebreaker session. On the boozy lounge lizard classic, “That’s Life” he intoned --“You’re ridin’ high in April, shot down in May. “ Boy. He said it. How things can change in a single day—the head that wears the crown can wind up in the basket.
I awoke Sunday a little later. No need to change tires as the race meats were mounted. Went out to warm up the Coupe, and found Wade perplexed that both his spanky new rear A6s were dead flat. After speculating that some spiteful one had slipped out in the dead of night in a black catsuit and done a dirty deed, he discovered that the valve cores were a tad loose. Jeff Duncan saved the day with a portable compressor.
Tooled out to CBE under a leaden sky, with a hint of light rain wringing out of the low cloud deck. As Wade dealt with his tire issue, a man with a camera recorded every move. Wow. Now even papparrazi. A new guy in a Viper on street tires with a luggage rack on the rear deck (!) pointed to his ride and told the cameraman that it was specifically designed to beat those, jerking a thumb toward the Cobras lined up in the paddock. Bring it, I thought, probably out loud. The Morans were crapped out, slackjawed, in the front seats of their car, sleeping off the previous night’s late night shooter and bacon fest. Jen, with mixed feelings of anticipation and sheer terror, awaited the arrival of Mr. Personality, who had promised her that she would log her Sunday runs in his silver monster. This was an historic Cumberland moment. The last time in recorded history a woman had piloted a Cobra at CBE was the year that Pinky Hawkins mistook a lithesome cocktail waitress for a famous female racer, and offered up his 351-powered Unique roadster, with indifferent results. Slowly but steadily, the field trickled in. Fast Freddie arrived. We went to breakfast. We walked the course. Still no Larry. Jen, clearly edgy, began to suspect that she was the victim of another one of CACC’s cruel jokes.
The coursewalk revealed that Boggs had widened some gates and changed the direction of first two cones of the back straight slalom to make them on the same side as the natural exit from the crossover. The jogs before the kink and the crossover were removed. These changes promised more speed, and lower times. The weather cooperated, as the clouds quickly burned away the intermittent drizzle, leaving a beautiful rainbow arcing over the paddock. RIP Ronnie James Dio.
Finally, just before the driver’s meeting, Casey arrived. Jen, channeling Donna Mae, would run in the first heat. They retired to the paddock just after the drivers’ meeting. Mike Moran, subbing for Larry, worked Corner 5 with me, so that Casey could coach Jen on the secrets of his brutal machine. On street tires.
First heat revealed that the changes were deceptive. Yes, they meant more speed, but, as Andy Thomas, Mark Liller, and a white Crossfire discovered, that speed was a seductive temptress, luring these men into spectacular spins, slides and cone-ridden out of shape turns. In other first heat action Ziptier Rob Robeson looked quick in his black RX-8, and a sweet black Z4 BMW also laid down some on the edge runs. Alan Pozner and bud Kenny Sorenson, apparently blissfully unaware of CBE’s loose “no co-driving in the same heat” rule (more like a guideline) ruled the first heat, running Pozner’s yellow Boxter into the 51s, as Sorenson warmed the tires only four or so cars before Pozner’s runs. Sorenson was faster, but thumbs down anyway.
Jen Moran’s first runs looked quite tentative, as she babied Larry’s beast around the course, hunched forward, shoulders high, clutching the wheel, face scrunched up, peering through the passing cones as they slowly went by. By the fourth run, she was gingerly cracking open the throttle on the straight sections, and smiling as she galloped past Mike and me in the kink. On the last two runs, loudly roaring pipes announced that she had found the go pedal, and a whiff of tire smoke at the crossover indicated that she was braking late and hard, which is how its done in these cars. They weren’t clean, but they were quite a respectable showing for the first time behind the wheel of Casey’s Kenne Bell blown rocketsled. So good job Jen. Joe “Mustang Boy” Oxenham shamed himself by riding along as Jen’s “instructor” on one run, getting a close up driver’s eye look at the course, a tactic that even car owner Larry did not dare. Also thumb’s down. But even my horrible time beat his, so the karmic scales appear to be in balance.
Meanwhile, I missed the second heat completely. I noticed the day before that, when putting down the hammer out of corners, my revs would go up slightly, and it felt like the car was not putting its beastly power to the ground. A slipping clutch was suspected. The pedal letoff was way high, and it turned out that the slave cylinder fork was very tight, indicating that full disengagement may not be happening. So with advice and supervision from Fast Freddie, and some good help from Larry, up went the BDC on jackstands and under her I went. After removing the fork assembly and the pushrod, the pushrod was bottomed out, and Fred pronounced that 3/8” needed to come off the end. So, with the clock ticking on the arrival of the third heat, a frantic scavenger hunt of the paddock for a hacksaw and a vise ensued. Mrs. John Felten proved invaluable, and I quickly got what I needed and shortened the rod. In the nick of time, I reassembled, and the result of the field repair was perfection.
Catching up, I learned that, while his Mom was helping me find what I needed, Matt Felten had used the more open circuit to his advantage, laying down a smoking 48.8 second pass. The snakehandlers of the third heat, including “Mr. Natural,” would have their work cut out for them.
The Bird started strong, with a clean 51.6 on his recon run. Fast Freddie beat that by a tenth, but spanked a cone. Mr. Natural, edged Fred’s time by a full second, but also picked up two seconds in conical form. Larry Casey held his own on the R-888s, logging a 51.8. Barry Knotts found the path with a clean 55 flat. All other Cobra pilots either lost their way or killed at least one cone on their first lap. Dave T. and I got fooled on the hanger slalom, passing the first pointer on the correct side, but, forgetting that the next one was the same, we jinked to left before realizing that it wasn’t yesterday anymore.
The increased speed of a more open course that held so much promise proved more of a handicap than an advantage as the heat wore on. Doug Smith ran clean for a while and posted a smoking 49.98 third lap, and then he succumbed to the pointy orange menace, clipping a cone on each of his next three runs. Fast Fred kept it squeaky all the way through his fifth run, proving he’s still in the mix on any given day, and steadily sinking his times to a 50.52. Casey (on street tires) ran consistently in the 51s, but was also pestered by cones, until his last pass, when he cleaned it up and tripped the light with a 50.6.
But the toughest luck of all landed like a sack of wet reeking crap on yesterday’s hero, Wade. He ran fast all right, but had traction issues, and never managed a single clean run. Two cones each on the first two runs. A loop and off course on his third. A solid 49.5 ruined by a pylon on his fourth. A complete mess of eight cones on his fifth, and a lone cone turning an otherwise respectable 49.3 into a 51.3 on his last at bat. The utter mastery of the day before completely eluded him and grand total of 14 cones for the day marked the foul jinx that stalked Chamberlain this day. When the final results were tallied, the full magnitude of the turnaround sunk in: The fair haired Nature Boy finished 8th in XP, and 14th overall. I have to say I cannot remember Wade having such a thoroughly bad day. Saturday, he sipped from the sweet cup of victory, but on Sunday, he tasted the bitter dregs of defeat.
Its little consolation, because I have lots of them, but my day was no better. I threw away fully five of my allotment of six runs, running off course or banging at least one cone, except for a paltry 54.1 pass. In XP, I bested only Jen, who has less than five minutes of seat time in a Cobra. Even Paul P. beat me and the BDC, in a car with only four cylinders.
But one man’s fate is another’s fortune. The Bird’s 49.8 perched him high up in the winning tree, and he had only to survive Mike Moran’s onslaught in the fourth heat to earn his first Cumberland XP class win. Moran Brother Jake finished third heat sitting real pretty, too, with a 50.1 in the Suxass, while Smith brother Craig represented with a solid 51.1. Tink and Al had much better Sundays, with Tink posting a 51.7 and Al a 53.4, followed by Dave T.’s 53.7, and Czar Smith’s 53.8. While turning her hideous visage toward some, Fate smiled on others in the Thunderous Third. Honeycutt ran a spotless 49.6 in his Reynard, and Jeff Duncan’s Ultralight, was only a sliver behind with a 49.8. John Felten logged a 51.4. Ron Dotts clinched top stock honors with an awesome time of 50.8, and Smooth Jim smoothly finished his day with a 51.3 best pass.
Then came the fourth heat, and Mike “Breaker” Moran, and he indeed clipped the Yellow Bird’s wings. A talented driving technician, cool and capable of taking maximum advantage of the opportunity that presented itself, Mike ran six amazing clean passes. Not a one was slower than his first look of 50.2 He got the job done on his sixth and final lap, with a 49.6, two tenths quicker than Doug’s time. In the end, it was a two Moran XP podium, with a Bird sandwich in between.
The Moran Mobile Fires Off A Snake Load
The Bird Takes FlightThe world turned upside down -- there were only three Cobras in the Top Ten – Doug, Fred, and Larry, and, for the first time in a long time, none of them were Wade Chamberlain.
Oh well, that’s life. Chicken one day, feathers the next. The takeaway , I guess, is that everyone is human, and even the very best can have a really bad day. Sometimes our pretensions of control are mere illusions. There were great and epic battles in Super Stock and other classes, all up and down the rank and file. But now, I grow weary of scribbling, and its time to stop. If Lady Luck is kind, we’ll be back in Cumberland next month for the Historics to do it all over again, on a special even longer and more open course.
All photos courtesy of R. Biancone, and Team Ziptie, from whom they were stolen.
