A Racer's Letter:

A Win in the Rain at Seattle

by Marybeth Harrison

5:00 am. Vancouver, Canada – Under the cover of darkness, my accomplices – Mum and "the photographer" pile into our Jimmy to head off across the border to make a 9am test & tune start time at Seattle International Raceway. Mum was there as Chief Chocolate-Chip Cookie Supplier (she’s very good at it) and Chris Schrameck from A Slice of Life Photography was there as official photographer for Canadian Airlines Inflight Magazine (who had hired him to hang out with us at the track for the weekend and take pics for an upcoming issue of the publication.)

By 5:15 we were on our way - coffees in hand - and by 8:30 had arrived in Seattle just in time to unload, get suited up and get onto the track for practice. I had been to the track last year to race a closed wheel Toyota Corolla so I was able to spend the first practice session refamiliarizing myself with the track and getting used to the slightly different "Formula-line".

On the 2nd session I got a little carried away with speed into 3A and put my back wheel off. When it came back onto the track, it hooked up and sent me flying into the weeds. I came to rest on top of a dirt pile with both tires spinning in the air. Luckily nothing was damaged and after my rescuers pushed the car onto flatter ground, I was able to drive away unscathed. We borrowed a vacuum and managed to get rid of most of the dirt, rocks and grass.

On our 3rd session, I was doing fine, having fun until I went up the hill into Turn 8 and went to downshift for 9. I took my foot off the throttle but the pedal stayed nailed to the floor! Aack! Before the over-revs did too much damage, I hit the kill switch and coasted into the pits.

The verdict?
A rock had escaped the vacuum job and had wedged its way under the pedal! We threw the thing away and got ready for session #4.

We headed out and once again I’m driving along, doing fine, having fun until I go up the hill into Turn 8 and go to downshift for 9. (Is this sounding familiar??) I take my foot off the throttle but the pedal stays stuck to the floor … again! Again, I hit the kill switch. And again, I coast into the pits. And again, guess what?? ANOTHER ROCK! Yup, another one of those little suckers found its way from – who knows where – right into the same spot. We yanked it out. Threw this one away to join its cousin and headed back out for the last 10 minutes of practice. That was one of the flukiest things I think any of us had seen.

Our times from the day were so-so. I had no great aspirations of breaking any speed records or anything. I would be competing with about 36 guys who called SIR their home track and had many more miles logged on it than I did. Also, a few of them had come up to my home track (Mission Raceway Park in Vancouver Canada) back in July and had left me in the dust! So I was realistic about my chances of running at the very front.

That night my crew (chief engineer Marty Knoll of MK Technologies – platform manufacturing company for race car set up; and Al Towers also of Kelowna, Canada) were up until midnight putting in a new first gear that we needed for the longer track.

By Saturday, their hard work paid off when we managed to post one of the top times in our group … a 1.30.00. As far as we could tell from asking around, the only better time (out of the Club Fords and the Formula Fords) was a 1.28.90 so we were pretty happy with that. I very impatiently waited for the official results to come out. In fact, after an hour or so, I’d gone up to the posting booth so often that I finally had to start persuading other people on the crew to go ask for results for fear that they would tell me to go away and quit bugging them forever!

But after the hour had dragged into several hours it became evident that there was a major problem with the times. We found out later that a new timing and scoring system was in place and I guess they were still working some of the bugs out. So we ended up leaving the track Saturday night with high hopes that all would be sorted out by the morning.

Unfortunately, it was not to be.

When we arrived at the track Sunday morning, the qualifying sheet showed us 27th out of 36 cars with a dismal time of 1.42.438 (12 seconds off what I had been timed at by the crew). I just about had a heart-attack! I was upset but Marty just told me to concentrate on what we needed to do then which was try to post another good time in the early morning qualifying session. From there, we’d try and get things sorted out.

The prospect of doing any better than yesterday however, seemed pretty remote to me. We were out on the track at 9:05 which meant a number of things. For one, I wasn’t quite awake yet. I’m not much of a morning person and it takes me hours before I can even eat let alone drive a race car at 120 miles per hour! For another, the track was cold. The tires were cold. And our engine was cold.

Because of noise restrictions, we were not allowed to start the engine until 9:00 which meant we had only 5 minutes to try and get it up to temperature. (In fact when I pulled out of the pits, it was barely registering over 100 degrees.) And the worse thing was, we only had a 10 minutes qualifying session. This meant only 6 laps to wake up, get warmed up and then try to get a good time. I was not optimistic.

But I did my best and during the last two laps, was happy to see that I had broken the 1.30 second barrier with two 1.29.4’s in a row. I had no idea of course, that my last lap was a 1.28.841 (!!) until I came into the pits and Mum came running over with the good news.

Then the waiting started (again) for the official results which came in an hour or so later to show my starting position of 4th overall behind a Formula Atlantic and 2 Formula Mazdas (all winged e.g. ground effects cars).

After this terrific news it was awful to see the clouds darken and then the inevitable rain which just didn’t let up. Now I was faced with having to cope with wet weather conditions on tires I hadn’t practiced on. My only consolation was that neither had any of the other teams.

But I was in for a surprise.
After our one pace lap, the green flag dropped and I was hard on the throttle. The spray from the cars ahead was blinding but I was able to pull over to the left hand side of the track and caught some decent visibility (or at least as decent you can get racing in the rain). I got a good run into Turn 2 and it was then that a funny thing happened.

The cars at the front started to slow considerably. I was kind of confused for a moment. Marty and I had chatted before I went out and he had mentioned that the winged cars would take off at the start (they are generally 3-5 seconds faster than our wingless cars) and to just let them go and worry about staying ahead of the cars in my class. So it took me a few seconds to realize that I had a lot more traction and could actually make some passes.

By the back chute I had passed the Mazdas, the Atlantic and an F2000 car and was well into the lead! I remember thinking that the crew were going to be pretty surprised when I showed up on the straight away in first place!

And unbelievably, that’s where I stayed until the last third of the race when I saw a yellow car approaching in my rear view mirrors. I remember thinking "Oh, there’s a winged car catching up … I’ll just maintain my safe speed here and let him go by."

Oops – slight mistake. As he went streaking by, I saw the "FF" = Formula Ford decal on the car and went "Oh, oh … he’s in my class!!!"

Then I had to really turn up the heat. It took me a couple of laps to catch him and then another to complete a heart-stopping pass as we went side-by-side into the fast, sweeping Turn 2. But I was to be passed when as I had to lift coming out of 3B (just about dropped a wheel off the track). But as luck would have it, I was back in the lead when the checkered fell.

I came away not only with the Formula Ford win but with the overall Group 3 win as well.

It was more than I could have hoped for. I was – am – totally thrilled. Very special thanks to my Crew Chief Marty Knoll of MK Technologies and Al Towers both of Kelowna, BC.

Thank you also to my car owner, Gary Josefczyk and to my sponsors: Fountain Tire, Goodyear, Promotions Unlimited, Pro.Net Communications, Drivers Edge, Pennzoil, Chevron.

--Marybeth Harrison

To send a letter to Marybeth, send email to marybeth@thunval.com

Check out the Distant Thunder archives for previous entries by women race car drivers

Return to Distant Thunder front page

Go to Distant Thunder Archives