Ur-Turn: Death Of A Friend

(This week, major management and perhaps ownership changes were announced for Nelson Ledges Road Course. These changes might eventually include the closure and/or sale of the track. We asked noted NLRC racer and LeMons stalwart Daniel Sycks to write a piece in reflection — JB)

Change is never easy. It doesn’t matter if its a relationship, your drive to work, the packaging of your favorite breakfast cereal, we humans are creatures of habit and we like continuity and familiarity. Its part of what keeps our simple little brains happy. Sadly, change is part of life.

Evolution happens and things progress if we like it or not. Changes happened recently at Nelson Ledges Road Course in Garrettsville, Ohio; now I feel like I have lost a dear friend.

The surface of the track has not been good for the decade I have been attending this track, even though the current surface represents a significant upgrade over what it was as late as 2002. It’s never once been described by anyone as lush or placid. In the same way that VIR is a “racing resort”, Nelson Ledges is “primitive camping”. I recall my first fun day there being greeted by a flag station signal that I don’t think I have ever seen anywhere else, two socks up means I must assume that all is well as that station is able to kick back and display its ankle length crews.

After any trip to NLRC, any animosity starts to fade and within hours. Given a few weeks you are looking forward to more. That track makes masochists out of otherwise ordinary enthusiasts. There is some sort of special magic in the flow from turn to turn. Get turn one JUST right and you fly/slide/glide into turn two. Carry speed there and you cut a second off your lap and you fly into three. Get around the carousel any way you can as there really is NO right way. Just carry speed onto the back and pucker up tight and don’t lift for the kink, if you do you lose two more seconds.

Hold fast but don’t you dare go two wide… Now gather up your courage and brake like you mean it and toss your car left and tuck in right as hear comes the front straight. In a fast car its maybe a minute twenty. In a slow car maybe a minute thirty but no matter how long it takes you are going to want to fight that track all day to do it a second faster than you did your last lap. Its painfully addictive.

No matter what, no matter how questionable the grounds were, the staff has always been A+. They were warm, welcoming, friendly and simply a joy to be around. As such, many of the racers I know and think highly of count Bryan Bartzi and Kerri Lane as friends and members of their race family. I do as well. As such it really hurt this week to find out they don’t seem to be part of the future plans at NLRC.

I have no moralistic feelings nor have I drawn conclusions about what should or should not have happened. Its not my track and its not my money involved and I do not have all the information involved as to why this change happened. I do know thanks to well placed sources and public comments that a motorcycle group that makes regular trips to Nelson had issue with the surface when they ran there a few weeks ago. I know they were not happy with the surface and that they seem to have given an ultimatum to the ownership regarding the direction of the track. Sadly, the change that then happened seems to have been the cost of those who have invested countless hours over the last 40 or so years in what has in effect been one of the very last of the family run race tracks in America.

Maybe this is the start of something better for NLRC? Maybe this will be a painful bump in the road and better days are just around the corner? I really hope so as there is something special about the flow of that nasty, narrow little track. I am sure however that there is no Facilities Fairy. There will be no Pavement Gnomes who sneak out in the wee small hours of the morning and do magic to the surface. There are no Drainage Trolls who will fix the surface water issues or Paddock Elves who will grace the track with spacious showers or other amenities. This will all take real dollars and real investment that has never been offered.

I do hope that this is the start of something better. I hope its the start of something better for those who have been turned away from a life’s passion. I hope that they are rewarded somehow with new opportunities and new challenges. I hope that NLRC finds the investment that it needs to continue on. I feel reasonably sure that it has however lost in that some of its best resources are now gone. Change is painful. Lets hope there is some good to follow.