This Weekend's World Challenge Event Shows What's Right (And Wrong) With Entry-Level Pro Racing
Many years ago, I decided that I would buy any record on which Pat Metheny played, even if I didn’t know anything about the other artists involved. Sometimes the results are solid ( Wish), sometimes they are frustrating ( Sign Of Four), and sometimes it’s a really sexy Eastern European girl singing over what sounds like a chorus of little people from “It’s A Small World” ( Upojenie). In general, however, the rule has served me well.
The same is true for autojourno Alex Nunez; even when he’s writing for soul-sucking blackholes like Autoblog, he’s still a great read. This past weekend, Alex noticed an interesting story coming out of the Speedvision, er, Speed, er, Pirelli World Challenge race at Miller. Warning: race spoilers ahead if you click the jump.
On the face of it, Sunday’s World Challenge race sounds like a cross between a Hollywood script and a LeMons blog. Tristan Herbert’s Jetta GLI had suffered an engine failure on Saturday, leaving him with two DFL finishes that day and a back-row qualifying spot for the Sunday main event. Overnight, the team pulled the engine out of a local race fan’s Beetle Turbo and tossed it in the GLI. When the flag flew, Herbert stormed to the front of the pack, making a big move on race leader Michael Cooper and taking the overall race win. (As a former Compass360 driver, I am not quite contractually obligated to note that two C360 Civics passed Michael in the final laps and took the other steps on the podium.)
I mean, COME ON! This has Hollywood written all over it. The Jetta GLI is new to WC competition. The odds were against them. They pulled an engine from a street car. If somebody made a movie about this, every racing fan in the world would grumble all the way through about it being unrealistic. And yet, here we are.
Pirelli World Challenge and its Bizarro World Grand-Am-operated twin series, Continental Tire Challenge, are exactly what everybody always says they want to see in American racing. Real production-based cars going tooth-and-nail, denting fenders, on all the same road courses we use for our untimed lapping days. You can’t deny it makes for great storylines and great television.
Unfortunately, part of that “great television” is created through ruthless and arbitrary competition adjustment. The reason Herbert’s GLI carved so effortlessly through an entire pack of experienced racers in fully-prepped cars? Simple: he’s “under-adjusted”. The people who run the Pirelli and Continental Challenges are fully aware that new teams need to show results in order to keep their sponsorship intact. Over the course of time, cars are “adjusted” in all sorts of ways. The C360 Civics, for example, have to run stock brakes, which usually require pad changes halfway through the longer races. The “adjustments” can run from the subtle to the bizarre: the original World Challenge CTS-V had a “dropped” unibody which was effectively four inches or so shorter than that of the street cars. It really fixed the tall, tippy look of the CTS and it led to multiple Cadillac victories. It also infuriated all the tax attorneys and orthodontists who had dropped a half-million bucks on a GT3 or Viper ACR only to find themselves repeatedly lapped by a nonchalant John Heinricy.
You could say that Herbert was on “easy mode” in that race, but that isn’t really a fair way to describe a team that suffered a blown engine and came back to win. The best thing to do would be to watch the race and judge for yourself. Unfortunately, you will have to wait for the air date: NBC Sports, Sunday, May 27th at 11PM-1AM EST. Check it out, and don’t forget to check Alex out while you’re at it, okay?
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You're my kind of jazzhead, Jack. Metheny's a genius inventor of musical instruments, a fine composer and bandleader and the most fluid, expressive guitarist I know. Still, his long career seems at a lull, and his reputation less than it could be. Metheny's wayward output seems calculated to shed his once-huge fan base. In the past decade, Pat's lurched from straight-ahead quartet sessions into noisy grunge (Sign of Four), improvisational cheese (What's it all About) and my favorite, that futuristic contraption of solenoid-driven, computer-controlled sidemen called the Orchestrion. Many have an opinion about his work, and most of them are outdated or mistaken. Meanwhile, collaborator Lyle Mays remains a missing person, and their large ensemble, the Pat Metheny Group, hasn't toured or recorded in seven years, which is a cryin' shame. Most of his concerts are overseas, where jazz audiences are more open to jazz that isn't safely traditional, Wynton-approved, horn-tootin' genre music. I won't even try to bring this one back to cars. Maybe this is of interest only to Baruth and myself, but hey, I've endured page upon page of Panther love, fast-car bluster and meanderings through junkyards, with faint interest. Thank you for letting me take my turn on the "he's-too-into-it" stool...
If so, that's a shame, because Pat's best work usually comes in a collaboration. Did you hear him ofnCharlie Hayden's "Rambling Boy," covering Country and Irish folk music? Or Marc Johnson's "Sound of Summer Running," which paired Pat and his funky Americana avitar, Bill Frisell? All his perfectionism must have a cost. The Orchestrion video was promised, but never released. I wonder if the economics of touring with a nine-member group are beyond him. That's what happened to the big bands, they say. Sorry for hijacking this car blog, but you started it. You can't find full & frank discussion of all this on PM's own website forum, BTW. I must be flagged there- every time I raise a hint of criticism or career speculation, my post vanishes. Do you think there's any audience for an unapproved Metheny blog?