Nanook of the North

 

1994 was a strange year. It was also the year I attended and endured the most extreme motorsports event in my performance marketing career: The World Championship Snowmobile Derby in Eagle River, Wisconsin. 

In January... IN WISCONSIN.

Let that sink in for a moment.

As the Technical and Motorsports Manager at NGK Spark Plugs, I was sponsoring several amateur and pro 'sled' racers with dollars and product. It was decided I'd be on-site to support the competitors and our Regional Sales Rep who wanted a corporate presence for the 1994 event. 

The Plan: I'd fly into Minneapolis to meet with Sales Rep Chris, we'd pick up a rented RV and, after loading it with food, gear and corporate goodies, I'd drive the rig North to Eagle River with Chris leading the way in his company car. We'd park the rig in the race pits as our base camp and spend several days spreading the gospel according to NGK. A typical race event plan, no biggie... except NORTHERN WISCONSIN IN JANUARY.

My arrival in Minneapolis was met with extreme cold and snow, and even though I'd been in town the previous year right before Christmas, I was shocked at the huge snow banks everywhere. I'd already learned about indoor self-service car washes, which seemed strange until my education about how ice, snow and mud can pack a car's chassis and needs to be removed with heated and pressurized water. Otherwise, it can fall off in large chunks on the freeway and impact cars following too closely.

Chris' advice about driving the rented RV on icy roads was very helpful:

1. Accelerate from stops slowly.

2. Never stab the brake pedal.

3. Use the 'thousand-yard stare' while driving.

4. When approaching a stop, begin braking at twice the distance than normal, with half the pressure on the brake pedal than normal.

The trek to Eagle River went well. The weather held off and gave us a clear run, covering the 275 miles without incident. I slid the RV only a couple of times, keeping it nice and straight. We arrived at the track on a sunny and clear zero-degree afternoon, parked the rig in the pits and made our way 20 miles North to the hotel in Land O' Lakes, hard on the border with the Michigan UP. 

Thankfully, I'd borrowed a pair of high-end snow boots and had NGK snowmobile clothing, goggles and other cold weather gear to keep warm. I had no idea how critical this kit would be over the weekend. 

The day we arrived in Eagle River would be the warmest and clearest we'd see for the entire race weekend. Nighttime temps would drop to minus-35 degrees, and I learned that Chris always parked his car with the nose partially buried into a snow bank. This prevented the wind from freezing the engine block solid and allowed the engine block warmer to actually warm the engine enough to start safely.

The next morning, Chris and I headed to the hotel restaurant for a hearty brekkie. We'd just ordered when a guy sat down at a table next to us. I glanced over, then looked again and realized it was Stan Fox, a notable sprint car and IndyCar driver from Janesville, Wisconsin.

Me (whispering): "Chris... do you know who Stan Fox is?"

Chris (whispering): "Yep, sure do... but why are you whispering?"

Me (still whispering): "Well, Stan Fox just sat down at the table next to us."

Chris (still whispering): Oh man... that's so COOOOL."

 

Without missing a beat, I went over and introduced myself to Stan, who couldn't have been friendlier and accepted my invitation to eat with us. It turns out he was a MAJOR sledding fan and attended The Derby every year, was staying at the same hotel, and wound up meeting us for breakfast each of the following mornings before heading to the track (we both loved oatmeal). He also loved NGK spark plugs and used them exclusively in all of his personal toys. 

Snapshot: The Derby track is a self-contained high-banked half-mile oval of snow and ice, where several classes of sleds (snowmobiles) race at speeds of up to 100mph. The 'hot pits' is a Staging area just outside of the track where sleds and riders line up to enter the track and then cool down after each race. During my first walk through the Staging area, I noticed hundreds of small wads of multi-colored tape littering the area and asked Chris what they were. His answer: pieces of duct tape the racers stuck to their faces underneath their head socks, helmets and goggles to prevent facial frostbite while racing, then pulled off and discarded after each race. OUCH.

                  2021 Eagle River Derby Pro-Mod 800 Final Highlights

Snapshot: One evening just before dusk, Chris and I went to dinner at a family restaurant/bar overlooking a frozen lake. Before ordering, we heard what sounded like a flock of angry chainsaws. We looked out the expansive window and watched a group of six sledders speeding across the lake towards the restaurant. They stopped and came into the adjacent bar to tilt a few. After about an hour, the drunk sledders left the bar, mounted their rides and blasted off across the pitch-black frozen lake at high speed. This seemed pretty dangerous to me, but Chris said it was normal Derby-time behavior. "They're filled with anti-freeze and if they crash, they'll feel no pain."

Snapshot: We attended the Friday night grudge match races between the Super Stock and F-1 sleds, a very popular event. With the wind chill, the temperature was about minus-40 degrees and the ground was so cold that I couldn't stand in one place for more than a minute before my feet began to hurt. The solution: bounce back and forth from one foot to another, which everyone standing around the track fence was doing, resulting in a crazy group dance. Every time the sleds raced by, we had to duck below the top edge of the fence or we'd be instantly enveloped in a thick coating of ice dust and wind up looking like a weird snowman. Note: the track fence height has been extended since my visit.

Snapshot:  We spent Saturday morning visiting every race trailer in the pits to hand out spark plugs, contingency stickers and ball caps in minus-25 degree weather. We took a break inside the RV to warm up and have lunch. Without a word, Chris dug out a hibachi and some charcoal, pulled a big pack of bratwurst outta the fridge and started a barbecue outside the RV. I was stunned at the idea of grilling brats in such cold weather but it was normal for him, a Minneapolis native. We grilled brats and shared them with anyone who came walking by. We ran out of brats.

Not the actual brats, but a reasonable facsimile.

When we arrived trackside on Sunday morning, the weather had turned ugly enough that Chris suggested we bug out early or we'd never make it back to Minneapolis before dark. We were soon on the road South in a horizontal snowstorm, and the temperature was still around minus-25 degrees. The RV's heater was useless, and the full-blast defroster kept one square foot of windshield semi-clear. The engine belts kept freezing up with a loud squeal, then would heat up and work only to freeze again, over and over and over. The volt gauge kept bouncing from zero to 18 and back again. I was wearing ALL of my cold weather gear but still froze inside that cavernous RV.

As I carefully drove through the blizzard, the road ahead was covered with icy snow, visible only by two barely perceptible tire track lines. I drove like this for hours, thinking the whole time that I'd skid off into the forest and die, get buried by the snow and be found only after the Spring thaw. Luck was with us and we arrived at Chris' home before dark, so we drank several beers to celebrate not dying in a blizzard.

Epilogue: Stan Fox entered the 1995 Indianapolis 500 and was involved in a truly horrific crash that ended his racing career.

He was severely injured and in a coma for a week but survived. In 2000 he was killed in a head-on road collision while driving to a race meeting during a visit to New Zealand. R.I.P. Stan Fox. So it goes.

By the end of 1994, I'd lost my job at NGK and Mom was rehabbing at our home after suffering an alcoholic coma. 18 months later I was supervising regional personal watercraft (PWC) racing events for the IJSBA all over the country, and my spark plug technical background made me a very popular guy in the pits. So it goes.

I've been incredibly lucky to have enjoyed a long career that was so directly involved with the automotive performance and motorsports industries. I have Dad to thank for my love of racing, which he infected me with at a young age. Many people think race fans only like to watch because of the crashes. They're 100% wrong in every conceivable way.

Motor racing of any kind can be exhilarating and dangerous, and the threat of mayhem, injury and death is always there. However, as Steve McQueen's character Michael Delaney said in the film 'Le Mans': 

"Motor racing is important to men who do it well. For them, racing is life; anything that happens before and after... is just waiting."

All images, Gracias de Google Images; all videos, Muchisimas Gracias de YouTube.

Indy Who?

Why is there so much brouhaha over the Indianapolis 500? 'What', some of my friends ask me, ' is the big deal about a bunch of ugly race cars going around a track in circles? Driving a car isn't a sport, so what's all the fuss about?' What indeed.

My first instinct is to beat the questioning individual repeatedly about the head and shoulders, but that thought passes quickly. After a long sigh, I usually revert to my tried-and-true diatribe about competition, science, sports, death and salvation... sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. If the person to whom I am speaking goes all tharn and gets a glazed, vacant look in their eye, I just smile and say 'Never mind, you wouldn't understand.'

For me, the 500 was an important event that my Dad taught me about, him being an old skool racing fan as well. I reckon that would explain why, when Indy and Formula One ace Jimmy Clark was killed in the late 1960's, I went to grade school wearing a Black armband in tribute for an entire week. My friends thought I was nuts, and they were probably right. The 500 was always broadcast on ABC's 'Wide World of Sports' as long as could remember, although they usually interspersed it with weightlifting from Brussels and a soccer game from Caracas. Whatever... as long as they showed the bulk of the racing, we'd be OK.

But all that is relative, as nowadays the race has become (is still?) one of the great spectacles in sports, not just racing. Although a 1996 rift in the open-wheel racing world hurt the race badly for over a dozen years, The Indy 500 has reclaimed almost all the former glory it once had, but the nagging question remains: Why? Why does this race inspire and madden and possess drivers who yearn to compete and win at the hallowed facility? How does a team find the gumption to return year after year, sometimes qualifying and sometimes not, without hesitation or pause? Why do fans like me get crazy eyes on that Sunday morning, frothing with anticipation and making sure we have plenty of grub and beverages so as not to miss a minute of it? Why? WHY?!?!

Well, the answer is complicated. As a motorsports fanatic, I may not be able to offer an objective opinion, so let me dance around the hard-nuts of the thing to bring it into perspective. Naturally, there's the whole 'amazing science' aspect of driving a car at over 220 miles an hour on a closed course... speed, momentum, friction, aerodynamics, slip angles, traction, weight transfer, physics... everything that makes science fun and intriguing is present and accounted for. But it's more than all that.

A short story: in 1994, I was working as a technical specialist for NGK Spark Plugs while attending a humongous snowmobile race in Northern Wisconsin... in JANUARY. Average temperature in the bright sunlight was 35 degrees below zero. One morning I was sitting in the hotel restaurant with my co-worker, girding ourselves for a long cold day working in the pits, when in walks Stan Fox, one of the great Indy 500 competitors, who promptly sits down to chow down some oatmeal. Turns out he was also there for the snomo races, him being a Wisconsin native and all, and since I recognized him immediately and offered to buy him breakfast, he plopped down at our table and we spent the next hour talking racing.

Stan was one of those classic owner/drivers who spent an entire year getting ready to try and qualify and race in the 500, always short on funds but long on skill. He mentioned that he was struggling to get sponsorship for that year's race, but that come hell or high water, he'd be there. Sure enough, he qualified 13th and finished 13th, although he crashed out right at the end of the race. Not bad, but the following year he suffered a horrific crash on the front stretch, most notable for the outrageous image of his demolished car flying backwards, chest-high, the front end ripped off and his legs dangling in the wind, soon to be badly mangled. That race ended his chances to race at Indy again, but he continued to race road courses and sprint car tracks around the world until he lost his life in a New Zealand highway traffic accident while driving his own race transporter to yet another no-name race. R.I.P., Stan.

Does that make any sense? No? Hmmm...

OK, how about this: that same year, 1994, I was lucky enough to be at the track during practice sessions and snagged an Indy 500 'hard card' sponsor credential, which essentially gave me access to every part of the track, including the on-track 'hot pit' area. That morning, while I waited for my credentials to be approved, I stood in the scrum of humanity at the edge of Gasoline Alley, watching the teams and cars and mechanics and drivers walking in and out of the pits to the track. I met about a dozen guys and girls in that crowd, all talking about their favorite drivers and stuff, and after a while I went back to the offices and got my hard card. Instantly, I was special.... the famed 'Yellow Shirt' track security staffers provided me full access wherever I wanted to go, so the pits were my first stop. After checking out a number of teams, I strolled down that special walkway between the pits and the track, along with all the other race dignitaries, but as I got part way through, I happened to walk past the same group of people that I'd been hanging out with. They spotted me and immediately began shouting my name, laughing and whooping and throwing me devil horns and the whole enchilada. I WAS SOMEBODY, whereas less than an hour before, I was just a regular dude. Indy does that to people.

A side note: the team we were sponsoring failed to qualify that year, the first time Honda had attempted it, much to our disappointment... BUT I KNEW WHY. Turns out they'd been using the wrong type of spark plugs for an engine running on methanol, but the Japanese mechanics were too hard-headed to admit it and let the team down. I had mentioned the fact to the 'gaijin' mechanics who just shrugged because they weren't allowed to tinker with the engines. Lesson learned.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that sometimes, iconic events are hard to understand, their influence on people difficult to grasp, their meaning clouded in weirdness and superstition. For me, that day, walking with the kings of the sport in that place, even though I was just a sponsor and technician, I was a special person in a special place. I was in the clouds for the rest of that trip. It's probably a similar experience for the Super Bowl or the World Series, but those events are never at the same place. If you ever get a chance to visit and tour the track, DO IT. You'll find yourself watching the next race with a certain insider knowledge that is infectious.

This year's 500 will be really, truly special. Four women have qualified and are competing head-to-head with the dudes, a first. Multiple 500 winner Helio Castroneves will attempt to win for the 4th time, raising him to the level of the sport's few legends who have done the same. The field of cars and teams are well-matched and, although there are the inevitable favorites, the race has a habit of confounding the prognosticators and raising mid-pack drivers from relative obscurity to worldwide recognition. That's how it goes at the 500.

A quote once attributed to Ernest Hemingway goes like this: "There are only three true sports - bullfighting, deep-sea fishing and motor racing. Everything else is just a game." In the context of his life, that would likely have been true, perhaps not so much now. What remains as true as ever is that, like Michael Delaney (Steve McQueen) said in the great racing movie 'Le Mans', "Racing is important to men who do it well. Racing is life... everything else is just waiting.'

I'll be watching the race on Sunday, hoping for a safe and exciting race, hoping no one gets hurt, and time-travelling back to when I was a kid, watching the race with my Dad on our black and white TV, thinking of grand things like racing and life. Only this time, it will be with fine pastry and mimosas!

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Start... Your... ENGINES!!!"