INDYCAR: Laguna Seca corner worker report 


>From: Jeong, Victor 


Hey y'all,
     I'm just getting back into the american racing scene after living a few 
years in Europe.  I got my Flagging and Com license reissued a few weeks ago 
and started working corners again.  Got my invite to work Laguna Seca For 
CART weekend had vacation planned for the weekend and PCCRC at Sears Point 
this coming weekend.
     Well the weekend started early for me left work at 3 on Thursday, 
sneaked out the back door when nobody was looking.   Went to the storage 
yard and picked up the motor home, which had a massive fuel leak caused by 
old and decrepit hoses, twenty minutes later I was down the road with new 
hoses installed and heading home to load up.  Got home loaded up the "temp" 
home with all the essentials, food, my whites, and reading material 
(autoweek).  Had dinner waited for traffic to die down and got on the road 
at 10:00 p.m.  Got to Laguna Seca around midnight and went to worker 
camping.  Set up home and went to sleep around !a.m. now.
     Friday!!! 6:30 the alarm goes off and I'm thinking do I really want to 
get up? I get up walk over to worker transport and went down to 
registration, signed in and went up to turn 11 for the worker meeting.  I 
got assigned to turn 5, and was there all weekend.  We developed into a 
really great crew, and we really did have fun at times.
Nothing really exciting happened Friday, people were just out practicing.  I 
was getting to learn that them there formula cars really look quite the same 
when they're heading straight for you, and learned how to differentiate the 
cars by the paint on their noses or wings.  It really messes with you when 
they paint two or three cars the same design and just one small patch in the 
front helps you to distinguish between the cars. They also ran the Touring 
cars this weekend they came out to play, but they could do with about 20 or 
30 more car's.  Friday ended and went to worker beer....many beers and a bit 
of food later I crawled into bed .
     Saturday , the Alarm goes off at 6:30 and I 'm thinking god why ?  Back 
up to turn 11 for the morning meeting and off to turn 5 again.  The day's 
getting hotter I'm blue flagging the Indy lights, Atlantic's, and the Barber 
Dodges this weekend.  Towards noon I'm blue flagging and I notice that the 
track is startting to change.  Like the verticle going out in a telivision 
set.  Now this is a challenge to blue flag formula cars while the track is 
doing a snake dance for you.  After that session I mentioned it to one of 
the communicators and they said I was dehydrating, and start drinking more 
water fast. Today we determined that going on five minutes, was for all 
intense and purposes going on five " Skippy " time units; which means that 
it could be anywhere from five minutes to 35 minutes.  "Skippy " is short 
for Skip Barber Racing, where their time has been known to slip a lot. 
 Around towards 4:30 we're informed that the day is probably going to end 
around 7:30.  We're all in disbelief.  Of course some of the remarks that 
came after finding this out were all that's left is to sell us; being the 
last thing you can do to slaves nowadays....
     Some time around 5 ish the Atlantics were having their race, and a very 
infamouse driver meeting was about to happen.  We along the way lost one of 
our atlantics during qualifying when he drove over another slower (much 
slower) car in the corkscrew.  That's all the story I got from our 
communicator .  Well the Atlantics start their race and thing's are going 
pretty well, I'm blue flagging the shit out of the slow car, who just didn't 
have a clue as to how to go fast.  It's hard to not blue flag a good dice 
when all the cars look pretty much the same but oh well.  Towards the end of 
the race one of the RED race cars spins in our turn and high centers 
himself.  We could tell there was pretty much no problem except to get him 
off the berm.  Since I'm blue flagging I get to watch this whole thing 
happen, since the yellow flagger has turned to face traffic.  What happens 
next will be remembered for a long time.  Our corner is crewed not only with 
cornerworkers but we have emergancy and the Tow crew stationed there too. 
 Well when the pace car has picked everybody up we get the tow crew out 
there.  The truck gets behind  the car , and one of the Hookers hop off and 
tells the driver, " We are going to pull you back, then we will pull forward 
to unhook you do not move until I tell you to! " .  The truck is chained to 
the car and pulls the car off the berm, it moves forward..........  at which 
time the driver of the car tries to take off!!  The hooker proceeds to get 
the drivers attention by slapping him upside the helment and yelling , " God 
DAM IT what did I tell you!!!! "  had the truck come forward again and this 
time the driver got it right and did not move until he was told he could go. 
 Of course this has all transpired in front of yours truly and the rest of 
the corner crew.  And when he did get back in it was to a bunch of cheers 
from us!!!
     Next came the Barber Dodges, nothing really fun happend durring their 
race for our corner.  It's about 7:00 now and we still have the Touring cars 
to go.  Weell the touring cars came out, and there were some pretty fast 
ones, and then there were some pretty slow ones.  One being a Pontiac some 
thing that looks like somebody went down to the dealership the night before 
and welded up a cage and stuck fat tires on.  Another being a honda Accord 
driven by a " Mirko ".  the car looked pretty well prepared but not of the 
money of the front runners.  He was slowing way too much for turn five and 
wasn't carrying the speed up into the straight towards 6.  At about  7:20 we 
were trying to figure out if there was a turn on your headlights flag.  At 
7:30 we were off the track and the beer never looked so good.
     Sunday!!!!!!! The big day!  It's 6:30 and I'm thinking just one more 
hour.  Well up to 11 for the morning meeting.  Off to the turns.  We have 
the Indy lights qualifying nothing much happened. Then Indy cars came out to 
practice.  This was for the slow cars, to either practice or qualify, I 
don't remember.  Practice went well, we didn't have many things happen in 
our corner.  Checkered flag came out we're waiting for the last car signal, 
pretty muched relaxed, waving to the drivers (who didn't wave back).  As 
we're watching one of the last cars come by, we see that he's slowing way 
down and is proceeding to exit his car in front of us at a very rapid pace! 
 We all see the flames I reached down to grab the bucket of water and run 
over to the car and proceed to toss the bucket over the back of the car as 
my partner is spraying the rear of the car down with the fire extinguisher!! 
 NOTE: Indy cars/ CART prefers that corner workers uses water to put out 
fires since dry chem can do thousands of dollars worth of damage to the car, 
and effectively puts that car out of commission for the weekend.  It was 
intresting to note that SCCA corner workers responded faster and correctly 
than the CART safety crew stationed in our corner.  (Volunteer's vs. Paid!!) 
 Not to say that they don't care about the drivers or equipment 
but............
     After that most of the day was pretty down hill.  The indy race went as 
scheduled.  As the drivers passed by before the start , P.J. Jones , the 
driver who pulled up with a flaming car did wave to us!!  Funny how that 
works.  We were satisfied!  The race started and things seemed to be pretty 
unevent ful.  But then as the pack was going threw our corner Paul Tracy 
tried to dive for the inside line and came up short and spun into the wall 
at the exit of 5.  As a side note I noticed that all the photographers that 
like to hang out at that section of the track for most of the weekend seemed 
to be now missing.  Chicken or what? ;-)  The race ended with that BANSI 
move at the corkscrew, which I guess will be the new line for the IT 
drivers.
     Vasser got to take a victory lap because the guy in charge of the pits 
open or closed lost his comm, so opened the pits one lap late.  This time 
Vasser did wave to all of us.  After much media celebration, the Champion 
was to be taken for a pickup ride around the track.  At our turn we decided 
to do a F1 end and wave all the flags!!  We waved all the flags, cheered and 
hollered, and as They passed by Chip Ganassi turns and say's Thank You!. 
 Yeah it has been a lot of media hype but, seldom is the championship 
decided at Laguna Seca.
     After all this the Touring cars came out and there was some good racing 
going on.  It was quite interesting to see the Millen Toyota driving down 
the track sideways but hey it was fun.
     After all this was worker beer, then the Long DRIVE home........


Victor
FFord owner hoping to drive it over here one day....
Proud new owner of an Invader cart.
exowner  IT MGB#42
All information courtesy of MNI - Motorsport News International
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