You never know WHO you might be talking to

[Jack Olsen]

I went out for a testing day on Friday at my local track, Willow Springs.

I’ve been working for three winters now to try to get down to a 1:25 lap in my 911. To do it, I’ll need the perfect combination of temperature, winds, track conditions, tire condition, and, well, driving ability. I had some of those pieces in place yesterday, but… not quite. I got down into the 1:28’s pretty early, then with some tire pressure adjustments and a little focus, got into the 1:27’s. All of that is good for me and the car -- but the ambient temperatures, which had started out in the mid 30’s (which is perfect), got up close to 50 by about 11:00 and continued to rise.

There were about half a dozen other cars at this testing day. Right when I got there, someone came up and told me they’d watched my instructional video for the track earlier that morning. Another guy came up later and told me he’d met me for the first time in 1998, and had become a certified track nut in the meantime. People have heard of my car, my garage, and my track videos because I talk about them online. For me, it’s part of the fun of this hobby. But the one complicating factor with it is my prosopagnosia — I don’t recognize faces the way other people do. I use other things to identify people. Their cars are an easy trick. Other people suffer from this to greater or lesser extent. I have it worse than most. But I get by.

I’ve been driving this one track almost exclusively now for nine years, and it’s tricky to try to find areas where I can squeeze more out. There were some new cones set up along one section of the track, and I was using them to experiment with putting off my braking for turn 9, an infamous decreasing-radius turn taken at about 100 mph.

Here's a 1965 clip about turn 9, to give you some perspective:



https://youtu.be/nTU0V2DKYvk

Early in the day, I put it off that braking point a little bit too long — and went right off the track. My splitter sometimes contacts the pavement under hard braking, which has sharpened the leading edge of the aluminum like a knife. So going through the tumbleweed, it acted like a high=performance lawn mower. At the end of this video, you’ll see what the front of the car looked like when I pulled in.



https://youtu.be/WWa-VVxKH9g

There was no damage to the car, fortunately. My home-made aero pieces can be sacrificed in an incident like this, but the splitter was fine. The sand and dust I drove through paints a very literal picture on the back of the car of where there is an aerodynamic low-pressure area.



I came in, checked everything out, and went right back and clicked off another 1:27.

All of my aero unbolts and gets packed into the car at the end of the day. As I was packing up, a guy named Randy came over from a group driving old Fords and Shelbys and introduced a friend of his who wanted to ask me some questions about my car.

He noted my lap time. He looked at the contours of the car. He lifted up the wing (which was off the car, now) and felt its weight. He asked about everything, including the profile of the wing, the downforce I thought it generated and how I’d put it together.

Everybody asks questions — that’s what people do at a track day — but his were more focused than most. As the two men left, it was eating away at me that I might have met this guy before, or something like that. I remembered he’d been introduced as ‘Pete.’

I got everything packed away inside the car.



I went to wash my hands and said good-bye to the guy named Randy as I headed back to the car. He smiled and asked if I knew who I’d been talking to. That’s when it finally clicked.

That was Peter Brock.

If you don’t know, he talked his way into the Art Center’s design program when he was 17, then got hired at the age of 19 by GM, where he’s credited with the first defining drawings of what became the Corvette Sting Ray. He drew them when he was 20. And he’s also the guy who went to work for Carroll Shelby to run the Shelby Racing School. After Shelby found out that Brock was more than just a fast driver, Brock designed the Daytona Coupe that raced (and won) at Le Mans, the Nurburgring, Daytona and Sebring. Brock was the one who had to explain to Shelby why turning the Cobra into a coupe with a hard top wasn’t enough — for effective aerodynamics, they’d need to do a ground-up redesign of the car.

I didn’t have any of this in my head while I was clumsily talking up the virtues of my home-made, beer-cooler-foam wing and my high-tech (to me) methods of estimating downforce by measuring ride height with $5 junk-yard sensors pulled from a 1996 Lincoln Continental. But in retrospect, it was one of the great moments you can have at a track — casually talking cars with a guy who just happens to be a living legend.

If I’d had the good sense to realize who it was I was talking to, I’ll bet he could have given me a tip or two about that aero or the car to get me that 1:25 — or if I’d tossed him a helmet, he’d no doubt been able to take the 911 out and drive it to one.

Ah well. It was a complete pleasure speaking to him.

Here's one picture of him from back in the day, and one I found from this week.

[GH85Carrera]

Cool story Jack. You are a legend as well.

[Charles Freeborn]

While I admire your dedication to perfection - maybe consider not letting it cross over into obsession... and the blindness it can incur. To put it in perspective the greats were able to bring their A game to all the tracks - be it Laguna Seca to LeMans and not look back- meaning that not getting a specific time or goal didn't spill over into the next stop on the train.

No one in their right mind argues that Roger Federer isn't possibly the best overall player of all time... but on the red clay in Paris Rafa has his number...

As for the giants walking amongst us mortals - they're everywhere. You never know when the next guy in line at the coffee shop designed the de-fibrulator or walked on the moon. People of true accomplishment are the most humble. They've already proved themselves at a much higher level...

[motion]

Fantastic story!!!

[herr_oberst]

Cool story about meeting Pete Brock, (he probably goes unrecognized a lot), and a cool picture of Pete Brock looking over the Buick powered Ol' Yeller race car of Max Balchowsky fame.

[masraum]

Great stuff, Jack. Thanks for sharing. And yeah, if I ever ran into you, I’d probably end up posting about it on the web somewhere.

[tabs]

You could always claim that you met me, but more to the point would I ever claim to have met you?

[KFC911]

Originally Posted by Jack Olsen

I went out for a testing day on Friday at my local track, Willow Springs.

I’ve been working for three winters now to try to get down to a 1:25 lap in my 911....

For me, it’s part of the fun of this hobby. But the one complicating factor with it is my prosopagnosia — I don’t recognize faces the way other people do. I use other things to identify people. Their cars are an easy trick. Other people suffer from this to greater or lesser extent. I have it worse than most. But I get by.

....

...yep...you do get by...great story! You should become a writer when you grow up "Prosopagnosia"....say wut???

[Outlaw_singer]

That's pretty darn cool! I bet you curse your prosopagnosia right after the awareness kicks in...

[Nickshu]

Great story Jack...and I love the "farming" excursion video.

[Dixie]

Reminds me of the day I was casually telling a gentleman how to get around CMP. A bit later I found out I was giving tips to Bill Elliot.

[pwd72s]

Originally Posted by Capt. Carrera

Reminds me of the day I was casually telling a gentleman how to get around CMP. A bit later I found out I was giving tips to Bill Elliot.

Now, that's funny!

[Rich Lambert]

Back in my Cobra days, we had a club get together at the Red Hook Brewery in Woodinville. One guy showed up in one of the first new Superformance Daytona Coupes. There was a older guy with him that seemed to be his ride along mechanic. I introduced myself to him...
"Rich Lambert".
"Pete Brock".
"Wow, you've got the same..."
I guess he worked with Superformance on the redesign of the Daytona, or Brock Coupe. That was a pretty cool day for me.

[speeder]

I had already seen this on FB but it's a great story. Consider the fact that Pete Brock was checking out your set-up and asking you questions about it!

What an honor, even if you didn't realize it until a moment later. You met him and you guys had a nice talk. That's what matters. Maybe it wouldn't have been so good if you knew, you might have been nervous.

My Dad had a hot Datsun 240z back in '72 that had a Pete Brock header and full street exhaust on it, man did that thing breathe and sound great. I was asking the old man about it shortly before he died, trying to pull up old memories and he said, "that thing went like a MFer!"

[speeder]

Originally Posted by Charles Freeborn

As for the giants walking amongst us mortals - they're everywhere. You never know when the next guy in line at the coffee shop designed the de-fibrulator or walked on the moon. People of true accomplishment are the most humble. They've already proved themselves at a much higher level...

And then there is Tabs.

[john70t]

Skynet version 6,485,9760 will be based upon the Tabs when all other A.I. models have failed.

Mr. Brock apparently didn't waste any time on being famous.
Maybe that's why he is.

[nota]

ok but when did ''old yeller'' get a v6 and why ?

and the cobra coupe was a sketch john did of a gto body concept on a cobra that he claims pete ''borrowed''
john was the shop boy at Shelby

[dafischer]

It's not a V6. It's a Buick V8 with 6 deuces, as below.



Count the header tubes in the pic of Old Yeller.

[Zeke]

Some big names on that AL panel next to the seat.

[pwd72s]

Originally Posted by dafischer

It's not a V6. It's a Buick V8 with 6 deuces, as below.



Count the header tubes in the pic of Old Yeller.

Is this a "TV" Tommy Ivo car? He loved the Buick nailhead, used it in most of his rods and dragsters...