Saturday, August 10, 2002
I am rocket man
SPARTA, Ky. — Head bouncing like a psycho bobblehead doll. Cheeks slapping against the hard plastic innards of the white Simpson racing helmet that makes me look like a storm trooper from Star Wars. Five different seatbelts, zipped in tight, top to bottom, human pickle in a jar, wearing my three-layer Nomex fireproof jumpsuit, cockpit 19 inches wide, 3feet off the heavenly earth that I'm lapping at 170 miles an hour. I'm a rocket man.
Zero to 100 in three seconds, 155 around the 14-degree banked turns, locked and loaded, fat slick tires somehow keeping me from rolling up and taking off to heaven. Indy Racing car, Ed Carpenter driving, me along for the flight. Six-hundred fifty horsepower, six gears pulling a machine made of carbon fiber as fast as a man dares on a track with turns. A G-force of 5 on the turns — equivalent to a space shuttle liftoff — pinning me to the left side of the cockpit like bubble gum to a boot heel. Pavement flying beneath me like I'm in a time machine.
Three laps around the 1.5-mile Kentucky Speedway oval. Four and a half miles in a minute and change. Pure adrenaline making my hands twitch, my eyebrows arch, my ears wiggle. Around the corners, feeling like the car is going sideways, its rear end easing toward the wall, tacking like a sailboat. When do we start to spin?
Down the bank: 14 degrees, 12, 8 and 4. No spin. Time for one breath before Turn 2.
A red button in front of me, marked “E.S.,” near the place I put my hands. Emergency Stop. At 170 miles an hour, there is no time for emergencies, I think, and even less time for stopping.
No roof, no rollbar. No Bible in the glove box. No glove box.
I want out, until I stop. Then I want more.
Sometimes in this job, you stand around for days waiting to talk to jocks who think you're a creep. You watch bad games, hear canned excuses, miss airplane flights and your kid's first birthday. Other times, you fly.
They're running the Belterra Casino Indy 300 at Kentucky Speedway Sunday. Speeds should top out at 220 mph, 50 mph faster than what Carpenter did to make my head dance. They asked me to take this ride to convey to you what it's like. Either that, or they wanted me out of the picture.
Wouldn't you like to be able to strap your favorite media member into one of these bombers, then mention to him as you're shoving him off, “Oh, by the way, the steering's a little temperamental.”
“The first time we did this, we brought a vacuum cleaner in case people got woozy,” one official from the Indy Racing League said to me, as I was pulling on the fire suit. A few minutes earlier, I'd signed two pages of waivers which all but said, “If something goes wrong out there, don't look at us.”
Everywhere, there were men in fire suits and trucks with red lights, and warning signs and waivers to sign excusing the proprietors if you expired prematurely. It's not a place for timid people.
“I thought I was gonna die in that thing,” I said to IRL spokesperson Beth Agan. “When can I do it again?”
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DAUGHERTY: I am rocket man
