As I described in the previous post, the love/hate relationship that I have with my car is always taking me on new emotional adventures. This beast of a car can take me from one extreme to another in an incredibly short period. This Saturday June 18th was to be no different..
I had a special co-driver coming out for the day. Peter Cheney from the Globe and Mail was to spend the day auto crossing and have a general get to know you sort of day. We couldn’t have asked for better weather plus Scion Canada was in attendance with a couple of staff and demonstrator cars and to top it off Lorraine Sommerfeld from the Toronto Star was there too.
Peter came prepared with his helmet, his racing shoes to conquer my narrow foot box and loads of camera/video gear. Wow I was excited and truthfully all went well up until lunch. At least I got Peter and Lorraine in my car for several laps before all went wrong and I think Peter got just enough seat time to catch the auto crossing bug. Not that he didn’t struggle too… You see, racers who spend a lot of time at a race track don’t realize how easy it is to follow the track. At a race track, black pavement equals good and grass and tire walls equals bad. With auto crossing you have to memorize a course through a maze of pylons and then execute turns and find brake zones all the while trying to keep your speed up as fast as you dare, trying not to spin out or soil your undies.
Then the disaster came, I went for a lap and was having an almost “I love you moment” with the car when I mis-shifted and over revved the engine (and when I say I over revved it..I think I might have hit 9500 RPM) which for those of you know a Datsun inline 6 cylinder spells disaster.
So this is how the day ended for the Se7en.
