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| Power Failures, Crashes,
Lightning and Thunder… The
Road to Roush
August 15 & 16,
2003
Story by Dave Smith,
Photos by Mark Weber and Liz Langevin |
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Everything seemed like a great idea.
An invitation from the guys at Roush to their inaugural
race/show event named the Roush Round-up.
The two day event was part roadracing
(Waterford raceway), part drag racing (Milan Raceway) and part
car show (Roush Museum in Livonia).
It took about half a second to accept the invite.
Here’s how such conversations typically go… |
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Anyone
to FFR:
“We have a race event coming up, are you guys interested?”
Anyone from FFR:
“We’ll call you from the road for directions”. |
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Thursday, August 14
We headed out
Thursday morning for a weekend that promised plenty of track
time and a chance to catch up with the hardcore and often
ignored FFROGs from the Michigan/Ohio region.
The fastest route to Livonia MI from Massachusetts is
I-90 thru New York and then straight across Ontario Canada.
We filled up with gas in Buffalo NY minutes before the
largest power failure in history descended on the entire area. |
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As luck would have it we
had enough gas to get to the track, hotels, food, other trivial matters
were of no concern… Our plan, get to the track and worry about western
civilization later. While
everyone else was worried, we were talking on our two way radios about
how this might affect the event attendance and how we might get even
more track time than we thought we would.
Friday August 15
Friday morning we arrived at Waterford Raceway.
The track was built in the 1950’s and there are homes mere feet
from the back straight-away. The guys from Roush met us at the track and a few hardy racers began trickling
in. The official word from
Roush was the event was to be held. |
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| No sound
Meter?! That's reeeeally unfortunate. |
Roush President
Larry Parker in his Roush Mustang accompanied by some FFR
Roadsters and Spec Cars. |
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| The power outage affected the sound meters where
the sub 90 dba limit was routinely enforced.
We were all upset to learn this (our guys met quickly to change
our race strategy from short shifting and lifting past the monitoring
area to the new plan of running WOT). |
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Car and Driver
editor Larry Webster (at the wheel right) arrived to get some
track time in the Spec Cars and after a quick driver’s meeting
we hit the track (well actually, I hit the track but that comes
later).
Waterford is not a horsepower track as it is filled
with very tight turns and short straights.
The Spec cars ran well all day with the Roush Mustangs.
All in all there were about 30 cars that made the event. |
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| In the second pro session, I was driving the
Coupe (512hp Roush 402 engine, IRS, Race tires, sick-fast car), and
being followed by FFR engineer Jim Schenck and Car and Driver’s Larry
Webster. The Coupe was
really working well. I felt
like a great white shark in a tank of minnows.
The car was just cooking… |
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| FFR's Dave Smith driving the
Coupe |
FFR's Jim Schenck |
Car & Driver's Larry Webster |
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| Drift competition winner Dave
Smith |
No injuries |
Two wrecked rear ends |
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Then I exited out of the
last turn onto the front straight (right in front of all the spectators)
and did a beautiful long sweeping slide that seemed to last forever…
Until I hit the wall. The
nice thing was I has plenty of time to watch the wall come at me.
The car had turned all
the way around and I glanced off the wall on the nose and then planted
the rear right quarter solidly at about 50 mph, crunch. |
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| We pulled the car into the pits and surveyed the
damage. It looked
worse than it was. The
chassis took a good shot but it was nowhere near done.
Only a bent wheel would keep the car from going back out.
It had been a while since my last race so I made the only
decision I could at the time, I asked Dave Riha (FFR engineer)
if it would be alright if I used his car for the next session.
He said OK…in a way that a guy who is being robbed
hands over his wallet and wedding ring… no matter, I was back
on the track in the spec car and didn’t miss a session. |
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| The rest of the day was fun and thankfully
uneventful. Larry Parker
who is the president of Roush Performance took the Spec car out for some
laps and ended impressed enough to think about buying a car. |
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| Turning towards the infield at
Waterford |
FFR Jim Schenck was the fast guy
to beat. |
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Only seconds from the
end of the last pro race group session, the skies opened up and dumped a
massive amount of rain, effectively ending the day of racing.
We loaded up our trailer and headed for the power-less Livonia
Holiday Inn (also known for it’s excellent race car repair facility
located in the north parking lot).
Friday night we pulled
out the Coupe and looked at the damage.
I was worried that we hadn’t brought enough duct tape, but Dave
and Jim knew I was coming so they thoughtfully stocked up.
The hood hinge was bent about 12” out and the radiator supports
were destroyed, but remarkably the radiator hadn’t been punctured.
The rear end looked the worst but just needed some cosmetic duct
tape to make it whole again. The
crash had not bent the fuel cell supports or main tubes. |
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| Holiday Inn parking lot repair
station. |
Checking the "custom"
radiator mount after 1st drive |
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| After about three hours of surgery I took the car out for
a road test. My car has plates and registration in Massachusetts but that
doesn’t make the car look or sound like it belongs on ANY public road.
The car handled great. Our
makeshift radiator support was fine and after a half hour of road work
we figured we were ready for the drag racing Saturday am. |
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Saturday August 16
The next morning we hit Milan Dragway with two cars, an
FFR street car and the resurrected Coupe.
The guys at Roush were stoked that we made the races with
the coupe. Truth be
told, the repair job was so good, some of the guys asked if we
had brought a second Coupe!
I’m getting used to the stoke that folks give out when
you wreck a car and then fix it and get back to racing. |
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| The Coupe was dominant at the strip.
The launch area was not prepared and everyone was about a second
slow, but at 12.5 and 12.8 respectively, the FFR Coupe and Street
Roadster were the fastest cars there.
At the end of racing I was beaten out by a turbo-charged Mustang
car that changed to full-on wrinkle-wall slicks to run a 12.1 and force
me to second place |
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| Tech Inspection was
a breeze. I promised my wife I'd wear a fire suit, despite
the heat and humidity |
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| The Coupe was running well so I decided to drive
from the dragway to the Roush car show about 45 minutes north. This
was the same weekend as the Woodward Dream Cruise and I figured I’d
give some folks a good show by driving my far-from trailer queen Coupe. |
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| Launch times were
tough on the slippery track surface (2.1 sec 60 foot timesss).
ET 12.5 @ 114 mph |
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| The Roush car show was really fun.
There were about 7-10 FFR roadsters that joind our two cars on
display. The food was good,
the Roush museum was a blast. The
day ended the same as the roadrace had. Minutes before the end of the event the skies opened up again
with enough rain to make Noah seem like a reasonable guy. |
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We loaded up and made a run for the border and home.
Power had returned to almost every area.
There were some longer lines at gas stations, but all
told the average Joe American proved that disasters are what you
make of them. We
had a great time racing and send out thanks to all the FFR
customers who joined us. We’ll
see you there next year.
I have a great job.
Dave Smith |
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| Coupe
Saga |
Roush
Weekend Photo album |
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