ON
TRACK WITH RICK PEARSON - ISSUE ONE.
By
Rick Pearson
For those who don't know me, my name is Rick Pearson and I race a Clio with the Mark Fish Motorsport team in the Elf Renault Sport UK Clio Cup. I am an occasional 10 Tenths contributor, usually to be found toadying for supporters or flaming my fellow Clio drivers in the "Trackside" forum. Very kindly, the "powers that be" at 10 Tenths have offered me the space to speak my mind on the UK National racing scene from my jaundiced and somewhat biased perspective on a regular basis.
Rest assured, this will not (usually) be the standard race report (I qualified, I raced, I went home). Nor do I intend to delve into the politics that currently beset British motorsport, because frankly it bores the pants off of me so heaven knows what it would do to our overseas readers!
Instead, I will look at the quirks of my career to date plus my impressions of different cars and series that I have come across. Some of it firsthand, much of it gossip!
This week though I'll start by answering the question I get asked most:
How did I get involved in motorsport? At the time, I was a 25-year-old Yuppie with a fast car who drove way too fast on the road. So for a birthday present (given to myself, Yuppies have few friends), I spent a freezing week at Donington, acquiring my race license between snow showers in the company of a very mixed bunch of characters indeed.
The group driving the Vauxhall Astras with me ranged from the drummer from a famous 80's pop band (some previous experience), a South African guy who had won his trip as a prize for his touring car driving (slightly more experience) to a female TV presenter (believe me, no experience).
Whilst I'd like to pretend that I was naturally gifted, I found the race school course a strangely mental experience. Every guy who ever walked this earth (well since we invented the wheel) has been utterly convinced that he is a great driver. I was no exception. So to suddenly be put on a track against a clock is effectively the day of judgment for this belief, either you can drive quickly or you have no manhood. To make matters worse, I was sharing a dormitory with the South African Touring Car driver, he knew he was quick; he'd just beaten the rest of his nation. And quite the loopiest single- seater driver you'll ever come across. Daniel came from Paraguay, drove his racecar like he had stolen it and listed his main hobby as street fighting. This he proved by educating the Donington locals one night in "Why you shouldn't throw stones at an unhinged South American".
So I wasn't going to get a lot of sympathy from my roommates if the lap times proved that I was under endowed. Back at the track, I came across my first incidence of cheating, a topic that I will come back to in a later article, but a bit of a pet hate of mine as you will learn.
Our female TV presenter (or Celeb as she was known to us all) was painfully slow. However, the rules of engagement stated that we should only pass on the left, only on the straights and at all times we should observe our rev limit. No doubt this sounds very familiar to all of you who have ever spent anytime at a racing school. However, since Celeb was being given her course for free, and hence had no fear of being thrown out, she would drift round the corners at carthorse pace holding up all and sundry and then open up the throttle on the straights, busting the rev limit and condemning the rest of us to following her for another lap.
Fortunately our volatile Paraguayan was not in the saloon sessions as it was as much as I could do to stop the really very mellow South African from tearing her limb- from-limb at the end of a session!
Come the end of the week, we all had to complete a race to get our licenses signed. Results as you would predict, our South African friend won at a gallop, I lurked just off the podium places, the drummer spun all the way down the Craner Curves and Celeb was lapped. Twice.
Did we all go away better drivers? I would say the experience was invaluable in making me as competitive as I am now, but not everyone benefited as much. Driving the Fiesta guest car at the TOCA meeting two weeks later, Celeb managed to push both the leaders off the track going down the Craner Curve whilst being lapped and came within inches of destroying all three cars.
Next Week: How to finance a car company with a race series, Rick goes Caterham racing.