But meeting rattlesnakes, coyotes and javelinas at 200km/h down the back straight of a racetrack does make you question your commitment to species diversity. My son Tom and I have just been doing the $7000, three-day advanced racing course on Indian lands just outside Phoenix, Arizona. Look, guns are huge here. The biggest sign you see driving into the Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park says, “No Guns Allowed”.
Given the amount of wildlife you can kill just sitting behind the wheel of your 521kW Dodge Hellcat, the sign is a bit superfluous. The track and school are owned by my bestie Bob Bondurant, who at 84 is so tough he eats rattlesnakes, coyotes and javelinas for morning tea. If Bob were European, he would be an international rock star. But in the US, popular motor racing is limited to events where you don’t need to brake often, change gear or turn real corners. Events like NASCAR and drag racing. So, the sophistication of Le Mans and F1 is limited to the local equivalent of the SBS Mandarin channel.
In 1964 Bob and Dan Gurney did the unthinkable. They won the GT class and finished fourth overall at Le Mans in an American car, a Shelby Cobra. A year later they won the 12 Hours of Reims, clinching the 1965 FIA World Manufacturers Championship for Shelby.
Enzo Ferrari was impressed and in 1966 signed Bob up for $500 a race and insurance that covered him for $10,000 for death and $20,000 for “standing invalidity” (clearly the one to go for). On June 23, 1967, after an extraordinary career that included an F1 season, Bob’s race driving ended at Watkins Glen.
“Coming out of the turn at the top of the hill, I was doing about 240km/h when the steering arm broke. The car and I went up the embankment and we went as high as the trees. Coming down, backwards, was the last thing I remember. I hit and flipped eight times, end over end and sideways, and landed upside down. When the corner workers turned over the car, it landed on my broken feet, and the shock brought me to,” Bob told me this week.
Bob broke every bone in his body. He was told he would never walk again. Of course, after enduring incredible pain, he did. He also started the racing school, trained Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, James Garner, Tom Cruise, Nicolas Cage and John and Tom Connolly.
If you are serious about learning to motor race at a more mature age or lifting your skills, then apart from the distractions of the wildlife, the really bad American coffee (can you believe it comes from the incredibly sexist Mr Coffee machine), the occasional Honda that catches fire just outside the track and the seven-hour days that are really hard work, then this is the place to come.
Readers, my exposure to Phoenix over the years has been to land at the airport and head to Scottsdale for the January auctions. Understand that Scottsdale is to Phoenix as New Zealand is to Australia. Don’t get me wrong, some of my best friends are New Zealanders, and they are mostly human. But Scottsdale is seriously beautiful, with seriously beautiful people (with seriously wonderful work on their face and bodies) and seriously good restaurants.
Because we had a lot of miles to cover, Hertz would not rent us one of their supercars so we had to settle for a six cylinder Cadillac. GM claim this has 300KW under what passes for a bonnet. Can I say that if this has a bigger engine than my BA ute I will drive an electric car naked around the MCG this weekend. But it does have so many electronic tricks that it confirms my view that self-driving cars are about as far as way as statehood for the Northern Territory.
Talking of Le Mans, which we were a few paragraphs back, I hope you have booked a room in Goulburn on the weekend of October 27 and 28 for the top event on the international and southern districts of NSW motorsport calendar, the 24 Hours of LeMons. The Weekend Australian Racing team (WART), The Australian pens that don’t work, the left over Australian T-shirts and our very own highly unmodified BMW 3 will all be there. We are praying there are no brown snakes in the back of the Beemer this time when we take it out of its shed in the Adelaide Hills.
You know how we always rabbit on here about cars being better than paintings because you can’t drive a painting? Well, the art world has finally woken up. In New York this November, Sotheby’s will be offering Michael Schumacher’s 2001 Ferrari F1 car in the Contemporary Art Evening Auction along with a Warhol ($10 million) and a Basquiat ($13 million). The Ferrari can be yours for less than half of what you’d pay for art by a guy who painted cans of baked beans.
