ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 20, 1997 TAG: 9704220009
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-6 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: AUTO RACING
DATELINE: CONCORD, N.C.
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER
I crawled into a passenger seat in Mark Martin's Ford Thunderbird this past week on pit road at Charlotte Motor Speedway, tried to find a place to put my feet in the funnel of roll bars at the floorboard and looked over at the NASCAR driver.
``It's a pleasure to visit you in your office,'' I said.
Martin chuckled.
``So, I hear this car is a piece of junk,'' I said.
``This is a four-year old road-course car,'' he said. ``We haven't even changed the springs.''
That was comforting to know moments before taking a lap around Charlotte Motor Speedway at 165 mph.
I must say, however, that I felt totally at ease with Martin behind the wheel. My only worry was the one he expressed: ``Boy, it would be bad to have a tire go down on one of these ride-alongs.''
The most lasting impression was the stiff neck that set in the next morning and hung around for a couple of days. Ah, but it was whiplash with a purpose.
I learned things during my 90 seconds with Martin at speed that one never could understand from the grandstands or from the living room.
For instance, when Martin flew into the first turn, it felt as if we were burrowing downhill into a tunnel. It felt as if we were carrying way too much speed to make it. At that instant, Martin slammed on the brakes so hard, it was like he was trying to stop for a deer in the road.
It was unbelievable how hard he hit the brakes and how it felt like we were coming to a complete stop. Martin fought and sawed the wheel a bit to maintain control while braking, and a split-second later he was back on the gas.
Not easily, mind you. He floored it. I was slammed back in the seat.
As Martin went through turn 2, the wall loomed above me, and its presence played in my consciousness. It was a momentary feeling of total vulnerability such as you might feel on the highway when an 18-wheeler blows a tire next to you.
Twice I thought, ``If a tire blows now, I'm dead.'' This, of course, is why I never could be a race car driver.
Only 20 minutes before taking the ride with Martin, I'd had the opportunity to actually drive a Winston Cup car.
The folks at Valvoline had arranged the ride-alongs with Martin and Ted Musgrave to coincide with an eight-lap ``rookie experience'' at Richard Petty's driving school.
It's hard to believe you can do something like this in our litigious society, but the process is amazingly simple once you sign away your life on about three different pieces of paper.
The instructors give you a few simple rules, take you on a couple of laps in a van, and in a few short minutes you're in a driver's suit and sitting behind the wheel of a real, full-bodied, wide-tire, 600-horsepower Winston Cup race car. It reminded me of when I walked into the college radio station out of curiosity and they gave me a show and put me on the air.
On the track, you follow an instructor. If you look like you're in control and maintain the proper distance from the instructor's car, he picks up the pace every lap.
The car felt heavy and ponderous, twitchy on those big tires, enormously powerful. You don't really steer through the turns; you hang on and fight the tremendous pull to the right.
The worst crashes I have seen in racing have occurred in turn 4 at Charlotte. Two drivers died there before my eyes. But I fell in love with turn 4 the first time I drove through it.
You are supposed to maintain an even pace through the turns, but I discovered how early you can get back into the gas in turn 4 and began experimenting. One thing I could not do, however, was keep those fatal crashes from flashing through my mind as I went past those spots.
Perhaps that explained my lap speeds. Several classmates reached 140 mph. As I studied my sheet, I saw that I climbed up that ladder - to a point.
After the warm-up lap, I went 110.8 mph, then 116.7 mph, then 123.3 mph and 128.0 mph on lap 5.
Lap 6 must have been when I thought about those old Sportsman races. I fell back to 126 mph.
My last - and best - lap was 129.2 mph. To give you an idea of where that ranks in history, it was about 4 mph slower than what Fireball Roberts ran to win the pole for the first World 600 in the days of skinny tires and no spoilers.
LENGTH: Medium: 83 linesby CNB