WHRRI Sticky Tires News Letter

That’s it; I jinxed us! After writing last month that we hadn’t needed to have all hands on track to clean up a long line of oil, it happened. It is obviously bad news for the car leaking and any car losing it when they slide across it, but it is a lot of work, a lot of oil dry and a lot of time to clean up. It throws off the schedule and even ends up shortening
subsequent races for the groups that follow. It was talked about it at the last Comp Board meeting. It was noted by Ed Frank that it is an occasional problem at OTDs too.

The consensus was that while it may be inevitable that it will happen again, getting the offending car off the pavement as soon as possible could minimize the consequences. It was decided that Ed would experiment at the next OTD with talking about and using a red and yellow surface flag pointed at the leaking car. We may use some form of this at our next race weekend. The principle is simple; if you see the flag pointed at you, get off the track and on the grass immediately. The sooner that happens, the less we need to clean up!

Aside from the above, race weekend 3 was a success, all in all. While we continue to get more flaggers and other volunteers than we have in quite some time, we were, by coincidence, short of stewards, grid, pace car and tech workers all at the same time. The usual volunteers filled in admirably and the weekend went by with few hitches. It should serve as a reminder that our club doesn’t run itself. If you believe that the opportunity to race here is worthwhile, you should consider helping out. There was a time not terribly long ago (before transponders), where the only way to have your laps timed was to have either you or a crew member run a stopwatch upstairs for another race group. We do not want to return to mandatory volunteerism- that’s an oxymoron!

The new grill Jerry Pintar found for us got a good workout after last Saturday races. We’ll do it again Saturday of race weekend 4. Stay, relax, and enjoy good food, drink and the best company around – your fellow racers and their families. Please bring a dish to pass and a donation to help defray costs.

Next month I look forward to writing about a successful 3-day Vintage weekend and a successful Race 4 Weekend.

Again, I have pretty much decided to close each Sticky Tires with a reminder that we are already members of OCSC and that we owe the club our loyalty and participation. As is the case with WHRRI, it seems that 95 percent of the work gets done by 5 percent of the members. Despite there being more than 130 WHRRI members, I don’t think I see more than 10 of us at the OCSC general membership meeting. We can do better. Think about it!

See you at the track.
Brian Murphy