|
| |
Memories of the
Dip by
Butch Kummer
Fifty miles northeast of Atlanta
lies a place that is the closest thing to Mecca that those of our persuasion can find. I
saw my first race there on November 23, 1971. I remember the date specifically because it
was five days after my son was born. Although some would choose to argue with the
statement, Pete is more important to me than that stretch of pavement ever
could be. I have, however, talked about having him strap the urn with my
ashes to the roll bar, then releasing them as he screams through the dip one last time. I
guess I’ll have to change my plan…
I’ve watched a lot of races
from almost every vantage point around the 2.52 mile course, and every year at the Runoffs
we’d trek from corner to corner, watching different classes from different places.
But I’d always return to the same place when the big cars (AP, BP and AS, which were
later combined into GT-1) cranked up. It was much better before they moved the spectator
fence on the Turn 10 side of the bridge: if you found the right place (and were
6’7") you could watch the cars all the way thru the dip and under the bridge,
then catch sight of them again as they went thru Turn 12 to see who was going to lead
across the line. You could see who had the cojones to make the pass for the lead, then
make sure they were able to reel everything in order to make it successfully under the
bridge. Great stuff!
In the early years, I remember John
Greenwood beating the "factory" Owens-Corning Corvettes in AP, Carl Shafer
smoking the front tires as the fenders rubbed going through the dip, then down shifting,
turning the car sideways and spinning the rear tires as he went under the bridge -- lap
after lap after lap. I almost cried when James Reeve finally ran out of brakes in the
Corvair with the mid-ship mounted 427, then stuffed it at turn 12 in the ASR race (as my
buddy Mike Eakin said, it was as if the Sheriff of Nottingham had just killed Robin Hood).
I praised Zora Arkus-Duntov as I watched Bill Jobe come back against almost insurmountable
odds to beat the factory Jaguar efforts of Huffaker and Group 44 -- Jobe completed the
pass for the lead coming up to the bridge, then dropped a wheel at Twelve just to let
Tullius know that he had been properly dusted. I cursed Paul Newman for driving his
crippled car back to the pits after getting together with Doug Bethke in Seven: he took
the racing line going under the bridge (because he couldn’t see), which caused my
friend Mike Harrison to hesitate and be collected by the jerk chasing him in the Cobra
(who later rolled at Turn 1 -- an accident looking for a place to happen). I also remember
Howard Park taking out John Carruso (Lyn St. James spouse at the time) under braking for
the bridge on the last lap of the 1976 BP race Perhaps most memorable, however, is the
image of Doug Bethke coming thru the dip. He was one of the first to come almost all the
way down the hill prior to turning in at 10 (Newman, for one, never figured out that
line). This lined Bethke up on driver’s left coming up to the bridge, which allowed
him to leave his braking much later. The mental picture that remains is a yellow Corvette
in a four-wheel drift thru the dip at something over 160 miles per hour. Whew!
In my experience on the track (and
regardless of what you might hear, I have made more than one complete lap),
the dip, the bridge and Turn 12 are what define Road Atlanta. From my drivers’ seat,
the most intimidating of these is definitely the dip. Airplanes can fly slower than what
we’re traveling there. As I told my crew chief when I went to drivers’ school in
’84, "I can stay on the throttle from Seven until I brake for the
bridge, but unless I’m going for a hot lap or somebody’s on my tail, I’ll
lift just a touch as I go past Nine just to make sure they haven’t moved the track
since the last time I went thru there."
And now memories are all we’ll
have left. I understand that you can’t run 90’s professional cars on a track
that was designed in the late 60’s. The Mulsanne straight is but a memory,
Nurbergring is now a sanitary and safe stadium course for the most part, the high banks at
Monza have grass growing between the concrete slabs -- such is progress and the nature of
the times in which we live. I understand that the dip has to die so Road Atlanta can
attract the professional events that will enable the track to live and prosper into the
next century. Just because I understand, however, doesn’t mean I have to like it.
See you at the track…
<BACK
|
