On Oct 10, 2011, at 9:49 AM, Ken Waller wrote: > I saw D W's ride during the Speed TV live telecast of this fantastice race - > my wife & I wondered if D W's reactions were real or was he hyping it for the > audience. > I know I don't feel real comfortable being a passenger when someone else is > driving.
I wondered that too. They say that doctors make horrible patients. I know that I don't tend to be a very good passenger. For many years most of my passenger seat time was while teaching on tracks, so when I'd be riding with someone on the street and they'd do something that on the track would cause unhappy levels of excitement, the little lizard in the back of my brain would freak out. Now, consider that Waltrip has spent decades pushing a particular type of car, right up to its very limits of handling, on a particular type of track, and that when those limits are exceeded expensive and unpleasant physics lessons would happen. Now, he's in a car, sitting in the position where he's *supposed* to be in control (on the left side), but has no control of the car. So, already his brain lizard is telling him that he's in trouble. Then put him in a car with handling that makes his car seem like, well, like an American family sedan. When they hit the point that decades of experience are telling him that he has to hit the brakes *now*, they're still full on the gas. Even after the driver slows down, they are going into turns at speeds that if he tried it in his car, he'd probably land in New Zealand or something. I expect that the video was edited for the best parts. I also know how hard it can be to talk coherently when under stress, so he probably played things up a little bit, but I wouldn't be surprised if what he said was a pretty good expression of what he felt. Now, I'd love to see a video of him going for a ride in a pro-rally car. I bet that his commentary for that would be extremely colorful. For the people who have never been for a ride, at speed, on the track, with someone who knows what they're doing driving, I highly recommend the experience. It's a great way to recalibrate your understanding of the laws of physics. A couple of weeks ago, I was driving home on highway 9 from Santa Cruz in my girlfriend's Civic. The friend that we bought it from did an excellent job of upgrading the suspension. She commented that she was curious what I could on that road. I wasn't pushing *that* hard, especially on the straights, even so, she said her reactions were torn between smiling and peeing her pants. At the other end of the spectrum, years ago, one of my students did offroad racing. He was used to being a passenger in events like the Baja 1000. Judging by his reaction, you would have thought that we were driving down the Interstate to grandma's house, not pushing a Cortina to the threshold of adhesion on Sears Point. -- Larry Colen [email protected] sent from i4est -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
