The latest issue of Racecar Engineering contains a different kind of column by Paul Van Valkenburg.

In it he reflects a bit on the passing of Carroll Smith, and remarks upon Carroll having had enough notice of the end to take care of his affairs fairly neatly - including perhaps technical discussions he'd been meaning to have, or that others had been meaning to have with him.

Somewhere in there, Paul asked something like "who does a guy like Carroll turn to when he's got a technical problem?"

You may recall that Carroll in Engineer to Win made a point of describing times well into his career when he'd had his crutches kicked out from under him and had to think things thru from the fundamentals.

I've been thru my phases of relative ignorance and arrogance, and so I have empathy for anybody really trying to learn and understand. I routinely encounter people who've cut their education short well short of understanding, and not been inhibited in the least in arguing their faulty analysies. It must be hell sometimes being a Paul or a Carroll.

Paul was using his brief commentary on Carrolls passing as an entre to his reflection on the last column he'll someday write. I inferred that that was not that far of in the future. He suggested that the global recessionary rollback in motorsports development was going to result in it being a less interesting place to be anyway.

Having been thru golden ages in other sports I have some appreciation for his perspective. I also understand that he's been doing this for a long time, and has left it behind - or at least planned to leave it behind - before.

That perspective, implicit in Pauls writing, was brought out recently in a short conversation with Scott Zellner - Scott responded to my asking him if he felt the need to talk to people about problems by saying "We've been doing this a long time." I noticed that Scott and Jim talked plenty about setup during the weekend, and I'm sure there was a time when they hashed things out with less assurance.

Each of us is at a unique point on the learning curve. Riding the curve is more of a challenge and more fun in and of itself when you're relatively low on it. The further you get and the more you know, the more your enjoyment and satisfaction will be narrowed to the essence of the racing event itself.

It's possible, quite possible, to get quite enough of it, and want out.

Paul related that todays average club racer with a basic Data Acquisition package has an incredible amount of information available compared to 20 years ago. This technical access can be either boon or bane. Two competitors in the same class, in the same car for that matter, can have vastly different race experiences. One can tend to the basics and have a race weekend much like racers have had for decades. The other can spend a whole weekend screwing with damper, spring, and alignment changes when they're not staring at a computer screen poring over their data overlays. Either can be in heaven or hell - it just depends on the person and where they are on their curves.

As people like Paul and Carroll leave us to our futures, we will have to look around for new people to read and listen to. Will Erik Zapletal, Simon McBeath, and the like serve us as well in the near future? Yes and No. As you start out on the road to understanding this stuff, it's unlikely you'll ever pick a better friend than Carroll Smith. After his tutelage you'll be able to mine the new guys works for ideas to apply to the inevitable flattening of the return curve.

That's probably the nub right there - in the long run, are YOU interested in playing on the flat part of the curve? Can you perceive that it's still taking you uphill? Just a little?

Scott, who thinks that racing is like most anything else in life...it's not the answer, it's just another way of asking the questions...

 

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Scott, who thinks that racing is like most anything else in life...it's not the answer, it's just another way of asking the questions...
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Great way to put it.
I would think most of the people that got to the top of the curve will get bored and move on to something else, now the thing is that to get to the top of the curve on racing it will take a while even if you have skills, and something that has been part of your life for such a long time is hard to just forget.

Great writing.

 

I learned something VERY important from Mr. Smith...

He was wrenching on a brand new Swift formula Ford for his son Chris - this would have been a little less than 20 years ago - at Portland. He was as close to an idol as I had at the time, having read all of his books over and over, so I was standing there watching him work, adjusting valves with the car on stands. He had the plugs out and was rotating the engine through with a big-*** wrench on the center locking nut of the rear wheel.

Given his hero status in my little brain, I was utterly shocked when he buttoned everything up, put the plugs back in and hit the starter - with that wrench still on the rear wheel. It got a little scary there for a second when the engine started to catch but he hit the ignition switch before all hell broke loose.

As a little roundheaded kid would say, "I think we learned something here today." After I wandered away with my popped hero balloon, I realized that good race engineers are human and screw up, too - even the stupid little things - just like the rest of us. It made his level of skill and cleverness more achieveable in my mind, like I might actually have a chance.

It's not brilliance typically but hard work and attention to detail, thinking laterally and understanding first principals. I always shake my head when someone defaults to, "too much push = bigger rear bar" or kills the grip on the end that's working to get balance, rather than trying to understand the bigger picture.

K

 

Racing, like any mistress, can become tired and lackluster -- given some time, and our own tendencies toward entropy -- be it of the physical, mental or spirtual variety of entropy.
It's good to see you've had an epiphany, revelation, moment of clarity, whatever, but the sad truth is, that as humans, and with an utter incompetence toward absoloute happiness, we will always find disillusionment somewhere, sometime even with what fuels us as individuals.
We all fall on our own proverbs.
We all fall on our own swords.