By Bradley S. Pines
OneTrackMind
With two miles of twisty rolling road, 10 corners and a 2,900 foot straight, Summit Point Raceway (now Motorsports Park) was my home track in the Washington D.C. metro area many years ago. It was where I first covered sports car racing in the ‘70s as a journalist, ate nuclear fuel called Summit Point Chili, and survived my first on-track ride during a media day. Several years later I took driver training there myself.
I was learning all that Summit Point had to teach me. Wagon Bend is Turn 3, and it’s a fast, blind climbing left-hander with a decent downhill straight following it. Driving a low-horsepower “momentum car,” meant girding yourself for blisteringly fast T3 corner entry speed, and flying up and over that blind corner. And hoping the track hasn’t moved since your last lap. If you landed just right, just inches from the right edge of the track, a swirl of dust would rise to mark your passing.
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| Summit Point aerial view. (Summit Point Motorsports Park) |
I had just nailed that corner and accelerating flat out, checked my mirrors on the straight as I had been taught. A fast-mover, with twice my horsepower, had just popped up over the hill and was closing quickly behind me.
Turn 4 at Summit Point is called The Chute. It’s a kink on a sharply downhill straight that leads to a tight left-hand hairpin, the Ev Garner Corner. It felt too fast and scary way back ‘in the day’ to a beginning driver on their first laps of Summit Point Raceway. It seemed dark, the overhead trees blocking the light.
Driving into The Chute felt like diving into the darkest Amazonian jungle or Luke Skywalker flying his X-Wing down into the trough on the Death Star. Or Maverick & Goose slicing their F-14 Tomcat vertical to slice through a tight canyon with jagged rocks on each side, closing in.
Now, if you asked the white-clad angel on one of my shoulders, he’d tell you I was polite, and simply didn’t want to hold up that faster car closing behind me. Of course, the red devil on my other shoulder would tell you it was demonic Red Mist that held my throttle foot flat to the floor all the way through the apex of that next scary corner, The Chute.
At my brake point, I instantly realized I had made a big mistake. Standing hard on the brakes, just shy of lockup (no ABS back then), I couldn’t turn-in. All the car’s weight was still on the nose, and I was going way too fast to make the corner. I’d spin and slide right off the track. So I stayed straight and hard on the brakes, almost to the edge of the track. Then I slowly turned-in and just tip-toed through the hard left, barely on the tarmac.
“You know what you did, right?” came a shout from the right seat. My instructor, I’d almost forgotten he was there. “Yeah,” I shouted back, “I hit the brakes at the same spot, not adjusting for my higher speed.” “OK, then,” he replied and presumedly went back to his nap.
Now this was B.C. (Before Communicators), before standardized hand signals, before Instructor Training Clinics. Back then, Bentley was a badge-engineered Rolls Royce saloon car, and Ross was a pro racer also from B.C. (British Columbia) and not yet an author. He kept his Speed Secrets to himself. We novice drivers were taught what to do in the classroom and the in-car instructor was there to yell at us if we screwed it up. More DI (Drill Instructor) than HPDE, back then for the most part.
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| Brad Pines dances "Mrs. Peel" through the Esses in the '90s. |
With a few deep breaths, I danced my car through Summit Point’s Carousel and esses, and ASAP gave a point-by to that faster car behind me. He rocketed past and disappeared under the Don Beyer Volvo bridge.
Driving the almost-3,000 foot front straight, I think I figured out what Summit Point taught me on that last lap. Red Mist, often so dangerous, had stopped me thinking about NOW. I should have been focused on NEXT.
Next lap, I was thinking ahead, about where to brake, as I sailed past the apex of The Chute driving flat. During braking (a bit too early) I was thinking ahead about the best entry to the Carousel up next.
That little green guy on Star Wars was right, “Do or do not. There is no try.” Concentrate on the next and you will solve the problem of now much easier. On the following lap I braked a bit deeper and may have even heard a grunt of approval from my instructor.
I owe a huge debt to Bill Scott Racing Chief Instructor Bruce Reichel for his excellence teaching how to teach, both in the classroom and riding with me, “now melt off the brakes,” and his other students. Legendary instructor Miriam Schottland was brave enough to guide me to rotate the car quickly by inducing trailing-throttle-oversteer. There were other instructors of note, but let’s just say that track instruction has come a long way, baby.
These days, I’m often the guy in the right seat with no naps while aboard for me. I repay Bruce, Miriam and the rest by passing on what I had learned, and always striving to improve. No, we don’t move the track between laps. Check your mirrors all the time. Do not succumb to Red Mist.
Have ‘hungry eyes’ and concentrate on what’s next and now will be so much easier. The faster you go, the slower your hands should move. Don't tell the car what to do, ask it nicely. When your hands are straight, gas is great, but when wheels are turned you could get burned!
Have ‘hungry eyes’ and concentrate on what’s next and now will be so much easier. The faster you go, the slower your hands should move. Don't tell the car what to do, ask it nicely. When your hands are straight, gas is great, but when wheels are turned you could get burned!
Yes, you can do it, that very scary thing and conquer the toughest corner at your home track. I thank all of the 50 tracks I have driven over several decades for their lessons learned.
And yes, I remember the sheer joy I felt the very first time I drove flat through The Chute.
Brad Pines is ready to end the unscheduled break in his 21st season as a high performance driving instructor. He is often found at Xtreme Xperience events (XXSpeed.com) nationwide in the classroom, driving demonstration ride-alongs and in the right seat of their supercars. He instructs at as many CGI Motorsports and club driving schools as his schedule will allow.
He may be reached at OneTrackMind.brad@gmail.com, on Facebook as Bradley S. Pines and Twitter @BSPines. A new OneTrackMind.racing website is under construction.
