Thought I would let everyone know about Nationals... I drove like freeze-dried $#!+, but she nearly won it all. Here’s how it went down on Friday:
She started the day Friday in 4th place, behind two Corvettes .5 seconds ahead, and an S2000 a few hundredths ahead. She was disappointed with her performance on Thursday. She had beaten me on the practice course on Wednesday, but her Thursday time was a half second behind me. Still, she was within striking distance of the Corvettes, and by the time fifth heat got started on the East Course Friday it was about to POUR!!!
The first few BSL drivers got windy, but dry runs. The next pair stopped on course because cones were blowing over in front of them, and were granted re-runs. As Langlee pulled up to the line, the rain started. She finished a damp run in 3rd place with rain pouring down. We thought nobody was going to move past her on any subsequent wet runs, but neither would she be able to match the times of the ladies that went before her in drier conditions. Not the championship she was hoping for, but looked like she would finish her first nationals with a trophy!
Then the lightning came and the heat was suspended out of concern for the safety of the workers. Several B Street ladies hadn’t even gotten their first run in.
90 minutes later, a drivers meeting was convened. To my surprise, it was announced that in the interest of fairness, all first runs would be erased. Competition would resume with a clean slate. The drivers applauded. For Langlee, the guarantee of a trophy was gone, but the opportunity to get that championship re-emerged!
As she pulled to the line for her second first run, the steady rain turned to a downpour. Looking out on course, I couldn’t see the bottom half of the cars due to the haze of rain pelting the surface. Cars would kicking up 10 foot sprays when they hit big puddles. It was a mess.
She started the run in 4th place base on Thursday’s results. Midway through the run, she lost her way in the spray, missed a cone entirely, and DNF’ed the run. She dropped back to 11th place out of 12.
On her second run, the rain had diminished, but the course was still completely wet. She went out to put a steady banker lap in, just to set a clean time with no chance of hitting a cone, no chance of spinning, no DNF. Her banker lap put her in 1st place! I asked her what the car was doing when it misbehaved. Understeering? Oversteering? She answered, Nothing. She wasn’t driving fast enough to upset it at all.
By third runs, it was clear that the winner was going to be either Langlee or one of the Corvettes driven by Tara Johns. She was a multi-time national champion, and she was the driver immediately in front of Langlee in the run order. Since Langlee was leading, we decided the onus was on Tara to set a fast time, but if she were successful, Langlee would need to match it with a fast lap of her own. No sense driving 1230 miles back home knowing you might have won it if you had just not played it safe.
As the concrete began to form just the slightest bit of a drying line, Tara rolled of the line. Langlee followed 20 seconds later. Langlee was flying. In her first 20 seconds, she was .6 seconds faster than she had been on her previous run. But then, during the first 180, she got on the throttle a little too hard as she hit a puddle, and around it went. Tara’s run finished 0.006 seconds slower than Langlee’s previous run, but it was enough. Tara won based on her .5 second lead from Thursday, but Langlee finished her first nationals in second place in one of the largest ladies classes, and beat a former national champion in the process. Here’s how it all looked from inside the car: https://youtu.be/ot3pzyT0hNQ
And then the drama started.
Competitors in DP and ESP filed a protest against the Chief Steward for wiping out the pre-lightning runs. Not entirely unpredictable that some competitors would disagree with the decision. Shockingly, though, the protest was upheld by the Protest Committee. The B Street Ladies had a long meeting while waiting to be given their official time sheets. And were told that they could not even respond to the protest, since they were not named on the protest. After at least an hour of waiting, consultation from Howard Duncan (head of SCCA solo), it was determined that the protest process would play out over the next 10-14 days. Langlee will finish 3rd if the protest is upheld, or 2nd if not. The banquet had already started by the time we were released, but even when the competitors arrived, no Lady from B Street got to walk across the stage and get a trophy. And nobody got to try on a jacket or sign the storm trooper’s helmet (there was a sci fi theme to Nationals this year – Cone Encounters). Such a shame.
Howard Duncan had asked for testimony regarding the protest. Sticking with the Sci Fi theme, I wrote him the following email:
What an experience. It was the best and the worst of SCCA all wrapped up and fired out of a turbo laser. And a great time with my daughter. What a blast!Protest Committee
c/o Mr. Howard Duncan,
Back to the Future: Testimony regarding Friday 5th Heat East Course protest
Friday’s Fifth Heat on the East Course began under threat of foul weather. Sure enough, in the middle of first runs, winds picked up and rain began to fall. A couple of BSL competitors got dry runs. A couple had to halt their runs because winds knocked over cones, and were granted re-runs. And several more Ladies got runs as the rain began to pour. Quickly, however, conditions deteriorated to the point that it was unsafe for the course workers due to lightning in the vicinity, and the heat was stopped. Two BSL competitors did not get runs at all.
After about 90 minutes, a drivers meeting was convened. Drivers were told that competition would resume shortly, but that runs that had occurred prior to the weather delay would be wiped clean in the interest of fair competition. There was applause from the drivers.
Based on the above, many drivers changed their strategies. Tires were changed. The Ladies that were due to go out first because of their reruns went out in the numerical order. Most importantly, all competitors approached their next run like it was their first run, where the current leaderboard was based on yesterday’s performance and under the assumption that they would get three runs to set a fast time.
The BSL group went out and competed. It was fun and it was fair. The lead changed multiple times. In the end, a champion emerged, seemingly.
Given the unusual events, no one was surprised that there was a protest of the decision to wipe away those first runs that existed prior to the lightning delay. It is certainly debatable as to whether it was the right decision to wipe out the scores. I will say, though, that it was not an unprecedented decision. Several years ago, C Mod competition was ended in the middle of third runs for safety concerns when it grew dark and course workers could not see the cars on course, and vice versa. It was decided that all third runs would be wiped away, and each competitor would get their official third run in the morning, whether or not they had had two runs or three runs the previous evening.
But debating the decision to wipe out or keep the first runs on Friday’s fifth heat is not the point of this testimony. The point is that once the decision was made, it was irreversible. The announcement at the drivers meeting set all the competitors on a new and different path. Again, tires were changed, run orders were changed, and strategies were changed based on the announcement. If the protest is upheld, it invalidates the entire backdrop of the rest of the competition—who was ahead of who, how many runs were left, etc.
The Protest Committee doesn’t have a flux capacitor (and if they did, shouldn’t the DeLorean run in A Mod, because that’s the only class where finishing before you start falls within the spirit of the class, right?) But by upholding the protest, they’ve actually gone back in time and kissed their mother, creating a chain of events that lead us to a current future that never happened!
At least there is a solution that sees Biff punched in the face and saves the day. The Protest Committee can deny the protest. And I know they will.
It is their density.
