Herm Johnson injured in traffic accident

One of our drivers for the July race at B.I.R., Herm Johnson, was seriously injured in a car accident on Saturday, Sept. 17, on Highway 371 near Brainerd. Herm, who lives in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, was in Brainerd as an instructor for the Rusty Wallace racing school.

Herm had been at Zorbaz on Gull Lake for dinner, and to listen to some friends playing in a band. He told them he was tired and headed back to his motel room. He was making a left turn from 371 when his car was struck in the right rear by a Ford Taurus. Herm's condition was initially critical as he struck his head on a windshield pillar. He was airlifted to North Memorial hospital in Minneapolis and was in the ICU for over a week.

Latest reports say he is up and walking around, and his condition has been upgraded to Good. He will still have a long recovery. Our best wishes that it won't be THAT long.

For updates, check the Caring Bridge site: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/hermjohnson

In which: We actually finish a race!

It has been three weeks since the grand 25-and-a-half hour race in Iowa and I have been slack in posting our results. In short... we finished... in 22nd place out of 45 starters. Therefore we achieved at least two goals, 1) finishing and 2) top half.

And we finished without any drama. The car was amazingly reliable, didn't use much oil, ran cool all weekend, and the gearbox seems to have lasted without major issues. There were moments when one driver or another would comment about a vibration or noise, but nothing ever got any worse so we never did anything more than top off the fuel, check the oil and add a little now and then, and change tires once or twice.

And now... the rest of the story.

Tim Winker, car owner and writer of this account, was part of the ChumpCar staff for the National Chumpionship so had to be in Newton on Thursday night for a Friday morning meeting at the track. Anthony "Izzy" Israelson along with his wife, Christy, and two small boys, Dante and Marcus, arrived Friday morning. Rick Moe and Jim Seubert came down with the car later in the afternoon, with barely enough time to get through tech. The tech guys gave us a little grief about the A.I.V. (Average Internet Value) paperwork, but no major issues. We did have to do some re-wiring to make the tail lights work with the headlight switch.

Tim was the first one on the track and it was quickly apparent that the Saab was not going to be competitive with the fast guys. In fact, the Fart-hinder Saab was probably one of the slower cars on the track (or maybe Tim was just one of the slower drivers... naaaah). Even so, the speedometer indicated nearly 100 mph on the back straight before making the turn into the infield. It started to rain a little and it was a good thing the Saab still had windshield wipers. During a yellow flag it was obvious that a couple of cars just ahead did not have wipers, plus the inside of the windshield was fogging up. The drivers were trying to clear the inside of the windshield with their gloves! No such problems for us.

We didn't have a clock in the car so it was hard to tell when the time was up. Tim made a stop just to see if it was time to come in and had to go back out for awhile. Eventually his time behind the wheel was up and he turned the car over to Rick. The Saab was running well, with no issues. For the next few hours Tim spent time taking photos and posting updates on the ChumpCar forums and the Facebook page.

The format for this race was different from most. It used both the road course and the oval track at different times. Most of the drivers in ChumpCar are road racers, so the racing on the oval was new... and scary.

Iowa Speedway is best known as an oval track, where the Indycars and NASCAR Nationwide series come to play. The oval is 7/8ths of a mile and was designed with the help of Rusty Wallace. In addition there is a short section of infield road course, complete with concrete racing curbs to define the corners. The road course is a little over a mile in length. It dips into the infield near the end of the back straight, makes a couple of tight left-hand turns, three rights, a short straight, and rejoins the oval between Turn 4 and the pit lane.

The first five hours were on the road course, then five hours on the oval, then back to the road course for three hours, until 11:00 PM. Yes, that's thirteen hours of racing, and that was only the first day. There was another 12 hours of racing on Sunday! There was an overnight break that allowed drivers and crews to get a decent night's rest instead of trying to catch a nap on an air mattress somewhere in the paddock. Some of the more serious teams used the time to make major repairs while the drivers slept.

The racing went on in all kinds of weather, including rain so hard that there were small lakes on the infield part of the course. Tim also had a driving shift on Saturday night in the rain with poorly aimed headlights and driving lights. On the wet pavement there was little traction, so it was nearly like driving in an ice race. At one point he slid off the course and straight into a bale of tires, shattering one of the driving lights.

We generally drove two hour stints, but with no radio communication and no clock to let us know how long we had been driving, we all came in earlier than necessary. In addition, since we weren't really in the competition (this was the National Chumpionship, and the Fart-hinder team was not among the qualifiers, but rather a late entry to fill out the field) our pit stops were generally much longer than the five-minute minimum. Probably more like fifteen minutes. That extra time added up to a lot more laps behind the leaders. For one thing, we had two seats, one for Tim's XXL derriere and a slimmer one for the other drivers. Though it took only a couple of minutes to make the seat swap, it was one more thing to be done on several pit stops. A digital clock was found and duct taped to the dash on Sunday morning which made time behind the wheel easier to calculate.

Tim was the first driver on Sunday, which started on the oval. It would have been nice to have a camera in the car at that time as there was quite a bit of action just ahead of the Saab. A green Miata got tagged by another car in turn four and slid up into the wall, the Saab missing the action by only a few feet. A pair of BMWs went past on the main straight but by the time they reached turn two, one had rolled onto its side on the inside of the turn. Also in turn two, another BMW ran into the back of a spinning Mustang with such impact that the engine in the Bimmer was pushed back into the firewall, and the Mustang spent most of the day in the paddock attempting to make repairs. Jim reported that another car started to get out of shape just ahead of him in turn two and he kept his foot on the gas, tipping the other car back into shape and they were both able to continue at speed.

Since Tim was doing double duty, taking photos and posting updates on the ChumpCar forum, much of the maintenance was left to Rick, Jim and Izzy. All were happy that the car was reliable and the only maintenance was to occasionally top off fluids or change a tire or two.

With less than two hours remaining, Tim took the wheel for the run to the checkered flag. This was once again on the oval. He stayed mostly to the inside line to let the faster cars pass, but the Saab was still running at the same speeds it had all weekend, touching just over 100 mph on the straights.

With no communication to the team, Tim did not realize the drama taking place at the front of the pack. The BSD Acura that had led much of the race was running low on fuel so the team had gone into survival speed in an attempt to make the finish without another stop for gas. The British-American Racing BMW team in second place realized this and told their driver to kick it up a notch. He did so, setting the fastest race lap in the process and passing the Acura with less than two minutes left in the race. The margin of victory was about 10 seconds, and the Acura ran out of gas on the cool down lap.

The Saab served us well, and won't need a lot of work to get it ready for another season of ChumpCar racing. We all got a lot of seat time for a small amount of expense, more seat time than an entire season of SCCA Regional races.

Rick was able to cross three items off his Bucket List: 1) Racing in an endurance race, 2) Racing at night, and 3) Racing on an oval.

Thanks go to Rick Moe and Jim Seubert who prepped the car and made sure it got to the race, and to David Steen for providing funds to get the car finished for the Brainerd race. ChumpCar is truly a team effort and it took the contributions of all to make it all happen.