Phoenix – November 21st to 23rd, 2008


It has been unseasonably cold here in Florida for this time of year, hence the opportunity to head out to Phoenix, Arizona, to get some Western prairie sunshine sounded very appealing.

The invitation had come from a friend of mine, who operates out of Los Angeles. He’d recently rebuilt an old Porsche 934-1/2 that had belonged to Interscope Racing, Ted Field’s old team. It had been crashed at Daytona in 1979 and Dick Barbour had bought the damaged car and later on sold it to my friend, who had rebuilt it. At present, it has a mildly tuned twin-plug Street turbo 3.0 engine, which (I estimate) gives out about 350 horsepower but which will be “improved” over the winter, in preparation for next season.

I’d never been to PIR (Phoenix International Raceway) and so was looking forward to racing at yet another new track this year. Barcelona in Spain, Le Mans in France and now Phoenix, makes it three. It’s hard enough to learn a new circuit quickly, but to do it in a racecar that’s also new to you makes it doubly difficult! Ah well, best to just get on with it! At least it’s another 911-based car and I have no idea how many miles I’ve raced in them now but it has to be a lot.

The team and myself converged on the track on Friday afternoon, registered for the HSR West-sanctioned event and unloaded the cars. It was very good to meet up with some old friends from HSR West, who I hadn’t seen since Su and I moved to Florida from California in 2000. We are all older, but they’re as nice a bunch of racers as you could ever wish to meet.

Some interesting cars too: Several two-liter Chevrons and a 1978 Lola T333; a fast, bellowing NASCAR stocker; some lovely Porsches, including two John James-built RSR clones, which he builds (and drives!) so well; Drew Slayton was there with his intriguing tubeframe GTU 911; a horde (is that the right collective word?) of Formula Fords; several BMW sedans; Lilo’s gorgeous T70 coupe and his McLaren M6b, an eclectic field.

The black Interscope 934-1/2 looked very sinister indeed when the trailer door opened but, like all Porsche turbos, it fired up on the button and sat there happily ticking over in it’s pit area. I took the opportunity to get in and adjust the seat and belts to suit myself and then the team of Craig, John, Byron, Henry, Jeff, Puah and Lilo went off to dinner and then back to the hotel.

Saturday dawned bright and clear and I was early at the track as the first session for Group 4 cars was due to go out on track at 9.30. At 8.00, Ed Swart gave the driver’s briefing and, after noting that we were a small and select group (!), finished the meeting by asking who hadn’t raced at PIR before. Six of us put up our hands and Ed invited us to come with him and another driver in two street cars to take a tour of the circuit. “Our” car was a BMW, lent by the Brecht dealership and was a typically excellent BMW with great track manners. PIR starts at Turn One (naturally!), which has a long, sweeping left hand entrance before culminating abruptly in a tight, second gear, left hander that takes you off the oval and into the infield section. Then it’s a right hand sweeper, staying in second before a blind left hander, taken fast in third. This opens out into a double apex left hander, dab the brakes, grab second gear and your into a right handed horseshoe that you stay in the middle of the track for before lining the car up for a quick third gear squirt up to Turn Nine, which is the left hander that takes you back up onto the banking for a quick blast around the one end of the oval (180 degrees), then the straight and then it’s back into turn one again.

I climbed over the side bars at 9.20, buckled up and drove out to pit lane where I was guided into an appropriate slot and then came the usual 5-4-3 minute hand signals and then it was out onto the circuit.

If you can compare PIR to anywhere else, it’s a mini Daytona; 1.9 miles in length compared to Daytona’s 2.5 mile oval. I didn’t have too much of a problem until I came to turn nine, the one that takes you back up onto the oval section... By the time I arrived there for the first time, I’d discovered that the boost didn’t arrive until 4,000 rpm and I’d limited myself to a rev. limit of 6,500, out of respect for an engine that I didn’t yet know.

So, entrance to turn nine demands heavy braking as it’s a 110 degree corner and you’re slowing down after a fairly quick straight. So press hard on brake, rubber smoke fills the cockpit and...Oops! I’ve locked up the front brakes. Get off brakes, turn in, glance at tacho – revs just above 2,500, the result of which is... no boost, just when I need it the most. Stagger away with foot buried into throttle of 3-liters of low compression engine, with no boost until at least four hundred yards later, when it starts to come in and we’re off but by this time, the whole damn field of cars has zapped by!

Do this twice more, improve on not locking up the fronts, carry speed through the corner but I still can’t get the damn revs up to more than 3,100 after the turn and then pull in to let John, my mechanic for the weekend, take a good look over the car to check that all is okay and off we go again.

Whilst sitting in the pits, I’ve had the chance to re-think the lap so, going into turn nine on the next lap, I shift right down into first gear to keep the revs up through the turn. This works, but now I’ve got two more gear changes, one down, one more up, to cope with and I’m really not sure we’re going any faster. Session ends, come in. No out again for another hour.

Can we move the brake bias to the rear? Car obviously has too much brake bias wound onto the front. Done. Time to go out again to qualify for the afternoon’s twenty minute race.

This time, I attempt to left foot brake in order to keep my foot on the throttle and keep the revs up through turn nine. Rapidly discover that this takes quite some mental effort and discontinue the attempt! Note: From now on, use left foot to brake in my street car so that next year, I will have mastered the technique!

And so to the afternoon’s race. A rolling start and the moment the flag goes to green, I’m left in the dust, waiting for the turbo to spool up down the start/finish straight. Ah well, better get head down and see about really learning the nuances of this mini-Daytona. And I do. The greatest discovery is just how fast you can take the blind approach to turn one. Before this, I’d been braking at the end of the main straight, just before the start of the curving turn. Wrong! You can take it flat out, just grabbing third and then second gear as you rush up to the tight apex; only then do you really have to use the brakes. The curving double apex left hander can also be taken a lot faster than you at first think and you don't have to brake too hard for the following right hand turn.

So when the flag flew, I’d finished ninth and improved my lap time by some seven seconds a lap over my qualifying time. Now if only I will have learned to left-foot brake into turn nine by the start of next season...

My thanks to Lilo Zicron, Ed Swart, Wayne, Byron, John and Henry for a great weekend. I’ve been told I’m to race this turbo beast next year so am looking forward to the exercise. Merry Xmas, everyone!