![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
After the Five Hundred
May. 27th, 2009 05:31 pmThe Five Hundred is over, and Summer has begun. I've seldom seen a more perfect Race Day. Hot and sunny, but with a nice breeze blowing out of the east.
*****
I'm pleased that the Speedway has dispensed with their recent practice of having musical acts before the race, and gone back to driving antique racing cars around the track. This year they had a 1909 factory team Buick that may possibly have been driven by Louis Chevrolet. Nobody's entirely sure, since they weren't all that thorough about recording chassis numbers, etc, at the time. It is, at any rate, if not Chevrolet's, then identical to the one he drove.
There was a Lotus type 38 too, the team car of the one that Jim Clark drove in 1965. The Lotus driver clutched it right in front of us, and got on the throttle until he hit the power band. It went right from that rumbly, snarly sound to the musical, 'on the hunt' howl of a Ford in full song. I love that sound. There's never been another engine that sounded like that. That came on me at the perfect impressionable time of my life. Much as a duckling identifies the first psychologist he sees as his mother, so that engine impressed itself on me as the sound of racing.
*****
The Beer Magnetism was upon my mother. No fewer than four people spilled beer on her. I found this more amusing than did she. I idly considered buying beer and spilling it on her, but I knew there would be consequences, so forebore.
*****
Ryan Hunter-Reay admits in his interview that he wrecked his car through his own bad judgement. Such candor is refreshing, and much rarer than it should be.
*****
It strikes me how incredibly fortunate I am to live when and where I do. I'm at the very centre of the world Sunday, reasonably comfortable and healthy, able to enjoy myself in peace as a free man. It's too easy to take those things as the default state of humanity, when in fact they're anything but common. We have our military to thank.
*****
I'm pleased that the Speedway has dispensed with their recent practice of having musical acts before the race, and gone back to driving antique racing cars around the track. This year they had a 1909 factory team Buick that may possibly have been driven by Louis Chevrolet. Nobody's entirely sure, since they weren't all that thorough about recording chassis numbers, etc, at the time. It is, at any rate, if not Chevrolet's, then identical to the one he drove.
There was a Lotus type 38 too, the team car of the one that Jim Clark drove in 1965. The Lotus driver clutched it right in front of us, and got on the throttle until he hit the power band. It went right from that rumbly, snarly sound to the musical, 'on the hunt' howl of a Ford in full song. I love that sound. There's never been another engine that sounded like that. That came on me at the perfect impressionable time of my life. Much as a duckling identifies the first psychologist he sees as his mother, so that engine impressed itself on me as the sound of racing.
*****
The Beer Magnetism was upon my mother. No fewer than four people spilled beer on her. I found this more amusing than did she. I idly considered buying beer and spilling it on her, but I knew there would be consequences, so forebore.
*****
Ryan Hunter-Reay admits in his interview that he wrecked his car through his own bad judgement. Such candor is refreshing, and much rarer than it should be.
*****
It strikes me how incredibly fortunate I am to live when and where I do. I'm at the very centre of the world Sunday, reasonably comfortable and healthy, able to enjoy myself in peace as a free man. It's too easy to take those things as the default state of humanity, when in fact they're anything but common. We have our military to thank.
