Grand Prix 2012

Duncan coming into the pit. 

The Grand Prix is an event Montreal looks forward to every year. On sunny days, girls walk around in their shorts and skimpy tank tops, which is just another reason men go to the event, besides seeing the cars. For the pit crews and racers in the support races, it is actually the most stressful event of the entire season, not to mention the most dreaded. For my team, the Grand Prix is dreaded. The first year we enrolled in the Grand Prix, Jim was run over by Duncan, a trailer door hit Miro on the head and he also had bicycle spokes stuck in his leg, Duncan crashed the race car and I accidentally injured myself with the golf cart we use to tow the car. Two years later, the excitement continued. This year, it was probably the best Grand Prix event we had. The qualifying on Friday went very well, but we were a couple of seconds behind the leaders. However, we were competing with the best Formula Ford racers in North America. After finishing on the podium two weeks ago, our team was eager to continue demonstrating how efficient the car was. We qualified fourteenth out of thirty-five cars for Saturday's race.

 Saturday morning was tense. We always hope that the car is going to run well and Duncan will be happy with his performance. We got him on the track without anyone getting run over or injured. The minute he passed the starting line, he made up for Friday. He was coming closer and closer to the pack and he had some very good times, which was putting him in the top ten. Everything was great... until I felt someone touch my arm. I turned around and one of the officials was mumbling to me. I took off one of my earphones so I could hear him better. He started telling me that Duncan needed to come into the pits and it had to be now. I was a bit shocked. Duncan had never been black flagged, which meant he had a penalty. I was trying to figure out what had he done to deserve a penalty. Did he drive someone off the track? Dangerous driving? It didn't sound like him! I continued to stare at the official, not quite understanding. He was speaking to someone through his headset and then he returned his attention back to me. 

 Then it came out, "Duncan's car is on fire. He needs to get into the pits now. I'm going to get to the firefighters". The first thing I did was run to Jim, our race engineer and tell him to call in to Duncan through the radio and tell him he had to get Duncan in the pits. I then spoke to the fire fighters and grabbed the small extinguisher from our golf cart. The problem was, Jim couldn't get a hold of Duncan through the radio. It was actually quite scary. When we finally got Duncan's attention by showing him the pit board, it was the longest two minutes of my life. We were all waiting in the pit lane for him. I was holding my little extinguisher, standing next to a couple of fire fighters and pit lane officials. Then we caught sight of Duncan coming into the pits. He stopped the car and by the way he was slowly taking off his seat belts, he had no idea what was going on. There was smoke coming through. My father and I grabbed him and threw him out of the car and then we got the cover off the back of the car. We couldn't see a fire. The officials and I stared at each other, confused. I was afraid it had been a big mistake that cost Duncan the race. I was wrong. Suddenly, two mechanics from the BMW Sauber Formula 1 team were yelling at us, pointing to the underneath of the car. They came out of their garage and helped us. Miro took the side pod off of the car and we immediately saw the problem. The side pod had touched the exhaust pipe and had caught fire! The firemen quickly extinguished the fire.

 I was so grateful the officials and fire crew spotted this and saved us so much damage. We managed to tow the car back to our paddock and we selflessly worked until eleven o'clock at night to fix the nose of the car and the side pod. I tried to clean the exhaust pipe and other parts that had been encrusted with fire extinguisher fluid. Do you have any idea what happens when fluid hits hot metal? It sticks and is nearly impossible to clean off. WD 40, water, scraping, brake fluid, varsol and an SOS pad later, it came off.

Working until late at night

On Sunday, we found out that Duncan qualified seventh for the second race because of his great lap times. He managed to stay in the top ten, but did not make the podium. Looking back on the weekend, Duncan is very proud because of the level of competition he was racing with. If he had finished in Saturday's race, he probably would have been fifth. When we asked him how he felt about the fire incident, he said, "It was better to have a DNF (Did Not Finish) with honor than wallow in mid pack". I think he was just happy the car was in good shape and his lap times were consistent. We did the best we could and it really paid off in the end. It was a great weekend and we are looking forward to the race at Tremblant in July! 

Duncan proudly showing his heritage with a Scottish flag