A LOT MORE TIT FOR YOUR BANG
In February 2008, I drove my first race in the Pilbeam MP84. My wife, Brenda, had bought it for my fifty-ninth birthday, God love her. I had to wait a year to race it, because it was a giant leap from the Royale RP4. I went to test it and practice with it with Sasco Sports, who look after it at the stunning Virginia raceway. I must admit, the buttons and computer thingies everywhere were daunting, but I had to prove I could drive it so’s I could get my Super License from Historic Sports-car Racing and go from group three to group six, where there’s a big leap in driver performance. Maybe it was asking too much of myself—it was like going from Twiggy to Pamela Anderson, a lot more tit for your bang.
It was the 4 Hours of Sebring again. Dave Handy, the Sasco boss, would do the first forty-six minutes, I would drive the next fifty minutes, Pete Argetsinger would do thirty-five minutes in the middle, and I’d do the last session. That was the plan, anyway. Another gorgeous day. Twelve noon start. I’m looking forward to this, but I see the other cars practicing. Oh my God, “Spices,” Lola, Judd V10s—this wasn’t vintage anymore, this was the real deal with real pro drivers. I was in for an almighty ass-kicking, but ya gotta start somewhere. Why couldn’t it be a nice, smooth track like Watkins Glen, Road Atlanta, Road America, or Lime Rock?
By the second day of practice, I started to fall in love with the car. It was quicker than a shipyard worker at the four o’clock siren, quicker than shit off a shiny shovel. Wow, this thing could go! But it was the stopping that really got your attention. Every time you had to pick your eyeballs off your chest. The G-force was something I’d never experienced before. The team were great boys, Virginians all; Les wore a walrus mustache, red suspenders, and a hat pulled tight down on his head.
It was race day. At eight thirty in the morning, I went to our paddock, and there was my gearbox in pieces. What the hell! “Les!” “Les! Les!” He was drinking coffee and reading the paper. “Les, there’s only three and a half hours to go, mate.” He looked up and said, “Morning y’all, Mr. Brian. Sit down, I got some fresh cornbread. I gotta get the dog rings on the shaft a while and put this puppy back together in about one hour tops, okay?” and started reading his paper again. Of course, he was right. Just like the “predator” team, these guys were pros and I was a nervous girl. The car looked just magnificent.
I was in group three of group six. Groups one and two were V10s and V12s, fast, vicious buggers driven by fast, vicious buggers. These guys didn’t take prisoners and they didn’t care that it was my first race with the car. At the drivers’ meeting, Ken Fengler, chief dude at HSR, introduced me: “Gentlemen, you have fresh meat today . . . Oh, I’m sorry . . . You have a first-time Super License–holder today. Try and keep an eye on him!” Well, that made me feel just like a live rabbit at a greyhound track. And I was English—even better! The German guys didn’t care where I was from; they were after ze whole vorld anyway.
The race was getting nearer and I was getting nervouser. The flag dropped, the bullshit stopped, and Dave Handy was away in a field of forty-five cars. We’d qualified seventh, which was brilliant: against these cars, our engine was a Nissan V6, the smallest. I was sitting waiting my turn. It was hot in my suit, and the cars were going by so fast. I thought, “Jeez, I’m going out into that!” This was a different world. “Okay, you’re in!”
In comes Dave and the car goes up on hydraulic jacks. I pop in. Shit, it’s a spaceship! I’ve forgotten everything I’ve learned. The new tires are going on, we’re refueling— Oooh this is Formula 1 shit. The car goes down and I’m off. Don’t stall, don’t stall. I don’t. Yeah! Yeehaw! Hubble-bubblaflubbla-flibble-wibbly, I forgot to put my visor down. I just got out, and the flag marshal was waving blue at me; that means someone’s going to pass you. I was blue-flagged all the way ’round and I never saw the guy behind me. I came back ’round to the first flag, still waving, and I shouted, “Go flag yourself!” I never did see what they saw, because nothing passed me until the big boys came ’round.
Then it happened. The car in front that I was trying to take dropped something—a bolt?—straight into my rear tire. It blew the thing up at about 145 mph. The car wallowed sideways, the wall was coming nearer, and I had a bowel movement or two. I saw Heaven, and it looked dull. I was back again—I’d controlled the car! All that was left was the outer rim of the tire, which was going in and out from the bodywork like a licorice allsort having a shag. “Oh bollocks, I gotta make it back to the pit!” Thankfully, it held; crew waiting, new tire. Go, go, go!
Off again, everything running good. I check my computer readouts. It’s tough at the start, but then you get used to it, like getting used to women who stop giving blow jobs the instant they’re married. I see my suspension cantilever didendum slatulisor is going well, and my rear-brake induction certainty levels are right up there. Then Wally Dallenbach goes by. The noise of my engine and his together causes this strange sensation in my head. It’s not Cilla again; it feels like someone’s frozen a footlong corn on the cob and pushed it in one ear and pulled it out the other, a scraping-of-nails-on-the-blackboard thing. Shit! There was fluid on my visor—where the hell was that coming from? I was out of tear-offs, so I wiped it off with the back of my glove. I looked down and saw my suit was covered with a thin layer of foam all the way up from my legs. “What the fuck?” I panicked a little. Was this some acid eating away at my suit?
It is my last lap before Pete takes it. I do a really quick lap and I’m in the pits. I jump out; people are pointing at me, my crew’s hosing me down, the cockpit’s full of foam. Dave comes running back. “It’s okay. The fire extinguisher went off.” Pete gets in the car and he’s off. “Go on, Pete, my son, we haven’t lost any time.” What had happened was the two engine noises were powerful enough to vibrate the onboard fire bottle to “on.” See, I told you it was a friggin’ strange noise! Pete does some great driving and we’re lying about fifth. Wow! Top ten, not bad, not bad at all.
When I’m back in, he tells me, “Brian, it’s getting like glass out there. Take it easy, don’t snap the gas. Easy, smooth, okay?” “Okay,” I say. This is what all the hard work’s been for, this fifty minutes or so. I’m starting to feel my neck and arm muscles; my, that G-force is a little bastard. “Don’t do anything wrong, son,” I tell myself. One of the strange things about racing on a track like Sebring is it’s 3.7 miles long, and for the first twenty minutes I never saw another car. “Where the hell is everybody?” It gave me a chance, on my own, with nothing to hold me up.
Then, all of a sudden, just like a jam on the M6 road, the whole friggin’ world’s there. “Now, be careful, kidda. Take your time.” After many mini-adventures, the checkered flag dropped. This time, I knew the boy done good; the whole team was up on the wall, the marshals cheering. Straight into the winners’ circle. Third overall, first in class, first index of performance, three cups, and three visits to the podium. I gave the crew the first-in-class cup for the factory. God, I smiled a lot. I’d done it in my first race! I was pumped, happier than a dog with two cocks. And I never said “fuck” once in the interview.
On the podium, this very young professional German driver who’d won the race overall looked at me. “You are Brine Chunsen! Zis iss not pazzibol. You are ze zinker wis ze AC unt zu DC. How iss it pazzibol zat yu are up mein schvartzepoofen fur der whole raze? You are tu ault for zis.”
“Watch it, bonny lad!” I said. “That was me first race. You’ll be lookin’ up my poopenchuten when I get the hang of this car.”
“No, vait! You must giff me an outogram. This was a bit more like it.” He paused. “For my muzzer. Ha, ha, ha!”
Cheeky twat! He was actually trying to be friendly; it’s just that German humor’s not humorous to anyone but Germans.
A German friend of mine, Ralph Kellener, is a great professional driver: Le Mans twenty-four-hour, Daytona, etc., etc. Gunther the Demon Driver told me a joke once: “Brine, vy do chermen men like new carss?” “I don’t know, Gunther. Why?” He was laughing so hard whilst trying to deliver the punch line: “Because zey luf virchins unt ze smell of lezzer.” Bemused, I pulled out my Luger and shot him in the German funny bone—that’s the bit between the eyes. He said it smarted a bit, but you can’t keep an old German driver down. Do you know they don’t have a word for nipples in Germany?
They’re called chest warts. “Gervospriktechknicker.”