Doppler Photo: Photos and stories by Omari Stephens

20 February, 2015

Stop and Go, Mostly Go (Rhythm of Racing, Part 3)

(Note: this post follows "On-Track Prep" in the Rhythm of Racing series.)

What happens after the green flag flies is a series of balancing acts. When all's said and done, performance is judged by the vehicle positions as the checkered flag waves, 25 hours after the start. In between, you have to pace yourself.

If you drive too slowly, your competitors catch and pass you, and you lose the ability to place competitively at the end of the race. But if you drive too quickly, you increase the risk of mistakes and collisions, you increase fuel consumption (requiring earlier and more frequent pit stops), and you increase tire and brake wear (both of which cause slower lap times, and also require earlier and more frequent pit stops).

So the challenge is to strike a dynamic balance — a strategy that takes into account the state of the race at any point in time — and to find a way to be ahead of your competitors at the finish line.

An ideal race (a "clean" race) has two states: racing and pit stops. Ideally, you avoid all contact (either hitting other vehicles or being hit), the drivers make no mistakes, every pit stop runs perfectly with no mistakes, and the car itself is fast and perfectly reliable.

Of course, that ideal is mostly a fairytale, and particularly so during overnight endurance races. Driver fatigue and crew fatigue lead to mistakes of all varieties and of all levels of severity. Spill fuel on the track during a pit stop? That's an unplanned stop for a penalty. Driver is distracted and misses the braking point? Maybe the car ends up off-track with damaged bodywork. Everything running fine, but your alternator kicks the bucket? Even the Mazda diesels can't run overnight without lights.

So the name of the game is to manage those risks, which is another balancing act. Pit stops need to be well-choreographed. Functions need to be slightly redundant. Each individual needs to have responsibilities, but if they have too many responsibilities — if their head is in too many places at once — that's a recipe for mistakes. People end up needing to check each others' work, because it's a lot easier for one person to make an error, especially when they've been on the grind for 12 hours already, than it is for another person to overlook that same error.

And the most common form of redundancy is the checklist. Run through it in order, add a checkmark when any task is done, and erase after the car is back on track.

Did the driver complain about a funky vibration that's not bad enough to take an unplanned stop? Add it to the checklist. Shift knob getting loose? Checklist. Motorsports can include a whole host of unexpected distractions (such as if a friend's car is involved in a serious incident), and those kinds of surprises can cause you to overlook an "obvious" issue that you were supposed to check. Checklists don't forget.

Okay, so you've made it through the night. You met the brilliant red tones of a Thunderhill dawn and you're still on track, still turning laps, still in the race. The overnight stretch is particularly dangerous because of reduced visibility, and the early morning is equally dangerous, when the sun hangs low above the horizon, shining directly into the drivers' eyes at points around the track. 2014 was the second year running that a car has raced full-speed into a stopped vehicle under cover of darkness.

But you made it. Well done. I have to imagine that surviving the night and seeing the sun shine again is an amazing feeling. But there's still a long way to go. You and your co-drivers haven't gotten much sleep, and it's still a good four hours until the checker. Anything can happen.

…and you've got to be prepared for when it does. Put yourself in this situation. Twenty-four grueling hours down, just one hour to go. You're running second place overall in the race, and you've got a 10+-lap lead on third place. That was the situation when the #00 Award Motorsports / Ehret Family Winery car came in for a routine pit stop, which would be their last of the race. Fuel, tires, driver swap, and then the checkered flag.

But surprises can happen even when it feels like you're out of danger. When it feels like you've already beaten the beast. During the pit stop, a piece of worn-off rubber caught fire under the car (probably after falling onto the hot brake rotor). At the precise moment when the fire was slowly starting to build, the final driver was still stopped, adjusting his rear-view mirror, and completely unaware that anything was amiss.

At this point, remember: brake fluid is flammable. Oil is flammable. Gasoline is (obviously) flammable. Heated rubbers (such as the seals and gaskets in the brake caliper and suspension components) are flammable. Though unlikely, there was the potential for the fire to become a big deal. And any kinds of leaks, after 24 hours of hard racing, would increase the likelihood of the fire continuing to grow. At under 2 minutes per lap, it only takes a 20-minute delay for the third-place team to make up that 10 lap difference and pass you.

But that's not how this one ends. The crew was on the ball, and moments after I spotted the burning piece of rubber, a crew member grabbed a nearby extinguisher and doused the wheel. The team would go on to take the second step on the podium.

The full Rhythm of Racing sequence:

05 February, 2015

Restroom Retrospective

My X-T1 stays by my side in most situations, which means that it's accompanied me into a fair number of restrooms. While the vast majority of those visits were unexceptional, there were a few sights and situations that caught my eye, and I pulled out my camera to capture them.

In the bathroom of a small Japanese restaurant in San Francisco, I encountered some sort of incense-producing device. It would turn on and off at regular intervals. I really liked how the stream of smoke was backlit by a lighted box which I found very reminiscent of a vintage radio.

This was in a deli somewhere around the Nut Tree Parkway, during a road trip from the Bay Area to Reno, Nevada for this year's National Pole Vault Summit.

Another Japanese restaurant; this time in San Mateo, while I was visiting with my friend Karena. Big Bunny is watching you.

I'm not positive, but I believe this was the bathroom of a Whole Foods Market, somewhere in San Francisco.

And finally, some wall art in the bathroom of my friend Matt's race shop.

28 January, 2015

On-Track Prep (Rhythm of Racing, Part 2)

The rhythm of the 25 Hours of Thunderhill ebbs and flows throughout the year. But race-day prep is generally split into two phases: the paddock phase, and the on-track phase. The "Morning" post covered the first phase — the cars sleep in the paddock, and on race day morning, they wake up and warm up for the last time before they have to stretch those legs for real.

Afterwards, the teams roll the vehicles out into the hot pits, where the team members focus on pit stop strategy, camera mounts, race tire changes, or whatever else it may be. In the photo, a member of the Crowd Strike / One Motorsports race team pressurizes the air jack system on their #48 Radical SR3 before swapping the car's wet-weather tires for dry-weather race slicks.

And after the hot pits, it's out onto the starting grid. The 25 is one of a class of races where anyone can walk out on track before the start of the race; drivers, crew, and spectators alike.

Many of the teams push their cars out onto the grid. For one, it's a way to conserve fuel — endurance races are all about going as far as possible with as few pit stops as possible, and the more fuel spent not moving at race pace, the fewer laps you can make between stops. And as would be demonstrated later in the race, running out of fuel can be a recipe for actual disaster.

In addition to the fuel considerations, keeping the engine off is a way to keep some of the cars from overheating — many race cars get rid of the fans that keep street cars cool while at a stop, which means that those race cars build up heat unless they're in motion.

The grid walk is a time of rejoicing. It's a going-away party, of sorts. For crew-members who are friends and family, even though they may be physically present between pit stops, they're often mentally absent — keeping an ear on the radio to make sure everything's okay; keeping an eye on the track so they can head back to the pits if their car goes too long without an appearance.

This is the most present they'll be until the checkered flag flies, 25 hours after the start. So people enjoy that presence while they can.

But even during the grid walk, final preparations continue. Here, a team-member for the #67 Sparta Evo Brakes / Maxxis Tire / Bullet Performance team makes some last-minute adjustments to the car's race harness.

The US Air Force has been a long-time sponsor of the event, and the pre-race ceremony had featured flyovers since the race's first running in 2003, through the national reduction in flight demonstrations in 2012. Even so, the ceremony continues to feature demonstrations by members of the USAF Color Guard, as well as songs performed by a bagpiper. Here, a man salutes as the piper performs the national anthem.

After the national anthem, the race stewards start to clear the spectators from the track, the teams make sure everything is as set to race as it's gonna get, and the drivers suit up, sit down, and get ready to race. I've seen a lot of drivers experience this same kind of moment before the race — calm, focused, starting to block out everything that isn't part of the race.

The safety crew has the unique privilege of standing at the center of the track, in double-file, as the cars move forward from the grid and begin their slow parade laps, leading up to the rolling start. In the photo, members of the safety crew jog over to their vehicles after all the cars had cleared the grid.

And then, the green. 25 hours to go.

The full Rhythm of Racing sequence:

20 January, 2015

Morning (Rhythm of Racing, Part 1)

Annual car races have a certain kind of rhythm to them. A fundamental identity that defines them, even as they evolve over time. Certainly, from year to year, things always change — different conditions, different competitors, different tactics. But every December that I make the almost 200-mile trek to Thunderhill Raceway, I find a race that's familiar, even though it's always a little bit unique. Annual car races have a certain kind of rhythm to them, and the 25 Hours of Thunderhill is no exception.

After driving overnight through a torrential (by California's standards) downpour, I arrived to a clear morning that was free of the particulate haze that sometimes develops in the farmland surrounding the track. As twilight turned to dawn, Thunderhill's characteristic trio of windmills stood still before a lightening sky, and above a paddock that was still wet from the night's rains.

The air was cool and calm. Not as frigid as the prior year, when I arrived to see Hoosiers covered in ice, but the wet still made things a bit uncomfortable. At the cusp of dawn, many of the teams began pulling back the covers that they had lashed to keep the water out overnight. It was the beginning of the last preparations before they would do battle against the clock, against each other, and against themselves.

The safety crew also had final preparations, and they huddled as the sun had just crested the horizon. It would take a little while, yet, for the day to warm. In the photo, Mike Easton (second from right) addresses the group, with coffee in hand, as his breath leaves a faint trail of condensation in the air.

As time counts down toward the start, teams snap into their morning routines and pick up steam. In the photo, the JFC (Just Fast Cars) racing team adds a calculated initial load of fuel to their car.

Clarity of vision is a constant focus in motorsports — the easier it is to see well, the easier it becomes for the driver to stay relaxed, avoid fatigue, and avoid making mistakes. Many teams run Lexan windshields and windows rather than glass because Lexan is lighter and won't shatter in the event of a crash. Then they polish and protect those pieces incessantly.

Here, a crew member for Team Quick Racing Products wipes off overnight condensation as he cleans the right-hand window of the team's Superlight SLC racecar. The team retired from the prior year's race with a broken steering mechanism, and hoped to better on that result during this race.

Likewise, the paramedics also need to see. Here "B.C.", an emergency medical technician, wipes raindrops from the windshield of one of the Side Trax EMS vehicles as they prepare for the race. You may also remember B.C. as the blue-clad patriarch in the "Safety in Numbers" post from last year's 25 Hours of Camaraderie series.

After all is clean and dry, the teams do final vinyl applications, typically including driver name touchups and sponsor decals. In the photo, a member of the Honda factory race team adds a remembrance for Joe McCarthy, a fabricator who specialized in Honda engine work.

The full Rhythm of Racing sequence: