BTW, I'd wanted to use the title "A Middlemarker's View" this time, but it's not happening yet.
It’s time the start the daily reports. I’ve been here for four days now, but it’s hard to write during the official practice sessions, as it is highly regulated: run 4 minutes on lane x, marshal 4 minutes, then 20-30 minutes to work on cars, repeat the sequence, all day from 8 am till 7:30 pm.
As in the past, I’ll try to write more about the substance and feeling of the event than the actual racing. You can follow the actual racing on the excellent feed listed in Paul’s thread, and see the results on the other one.
First some truly bad news: We’re all racing under a cloud of sadness. Three days ago, Stanislav Polic, long-time and very popular Czech racer, and a gregarious, funny, friendly man, suffered a hemorrhagic stroke (means a stroke caused by bleeding, not a clot) during practice. He was immediately transported to the local hospital. He is stable, but in a drug-induced sleep (to lessen the chance of rebleeding). If he remains stable, they will wake him up in a few days, and his caregivers will find out how much damage he suffered acutely. As is obvious from the above, he is in critical condition. If you believe in prayer, please consider including him in yours.
Now to the happier stuff. Latvia is a country of 2 million people. I don’t know about the rest of the country, but the proper word for the area around here is, I believe, bucolic. The surrounding countryside is flat fields and dense forest. The few buildings are mostly old, the colors are currently subdued browns and yellows, and often there is fog. Looks like a landscape painting by some old Dutch master.
Limbazi, our host city, is home to about 5000 people, and many/most of the buildings are from the 17th or 18th century. I think the town used to be much bigger, as it says on a sign that it used to be Hanseatic League member. Those were big Northern European cities, united in a trading league during the late Middle Ages. towns like Hamburg, Amsterdam, and Rotterdam. The whole town is quaint and pretty. The locals are so far to a person, pleasant and welcoming. Nice restaurants with delicious, often old-fashioned food.
As I write these words, Miroslav Recek, our friendly chassis and builder, walks by me 6 minutes away from his Group A team race calmly drinking a beer.
The venue is the best I’ve ever seen. We’re in the main room of the town community center right in the middle of the little town. The room is basketball court sized with a large stage at one end (where the officials sit), and theater seating for about 250. During practice over the 2 and 3 days ago, we had 5 or 6 elementary school classes come to visit us, with many wide-eyed kids hopefully turning into future slot car racers on the spot. I think that it’s likely been a while since a school class has visited a big race in the US. Tons of pit space in 2 adjoining large rooms. Good food and drinks, (cheap, too) in the foyer, brought in from a neighboring restaurant.
Currently (end of the Group B main in team production), there are perhaps 100 people in the stands of whom 20 or so are local spectators.
Great attitude, too. Three days ago, the internet here in the community hall was totally fubar’d. So they brought in a guy to laydown a whole new set-up. Took him 4 hours or so, and now we’ve got sub-second response for hundreds of devices and a beautiful video feed.
On to the Team Production race: Qualifying was unusually tight and the usual suspects were littered throughout the entire field. Gugu and Ricardo Taxeira, for example, found themselves racing against me. (Just to lessen the suspense, they beat me.) Lars Harryson is the main official, Andy Wasserman is the race director, a really good team I think. Prettiest hand-out bodies I ever saw. Mine was sky blue with clouds, with a racing stripe down the middle made of red bricks (a chimney). It ends before the wing and there’s smoke coming out of it with a little smog around that. Would win concourse at any usual race. The track is pretty much ISRA standard except that like in Malmo, there’s a bridge going over a downhill (right after a fast sweeper where the cars unload and get squirrely, right before a sharp left that you can barely see because of the bridge). Comically, since we had that same piece of torture in Malmo, we’re all not so bad at it this time.
So, near the end of heat 1 in A, we’ve got Casticone/Trugillio in the lead, Horky/Recek 1 lap down, the Kantamaas 2 laps down, and Matti Fhyr’s team 3 laps down. Gawronski/Vojtik are in 7th, 4 laps down, but they were on black.
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