We loaded the trailer two days before we ever turned a wheel at Blackhawk Farms. Car, tools, tires, spares, all of it, packed alone in the driveway in North Georgia, then fourteen hours on the road to Illinois. No crew riding along this time. Just me, the car, and a list of everything that had to go right.
Friday was SCCA Drivers School. Five sessions, twenty minutes apiece, and every one of them at full attention. There is nothing between you and the track in one of these cars. No doors, no roof, tires sitting right out in the open a few inches off the ground. You feel the pavement change under you before you can even see why. It grabs your whole attention and does not let go.
The sessions themselves are the easy part. It’s what happens in between that eats the day. Fuel it. Check the tire pressures. Top off the oil, no water to worry about since these engines are air cooled. Check the brakes. Charge the battery, because there’s no alternator doing that for you while you drive. Feel around for anything that rattled loose, because on an old race car something always has. Then a quick debrief with my instructor, reset my head, and climb back in for the next one.
Running it solo meant leaning on the people around me more than usual, and they showed up. Other racers helped strap me into the harness before every session, walked the car out to false grid since you genuinely cannot see much to either side or behind you in one of these things, and checked in between runs just to make sure I was still good. That’s the part of this sport people don’t expect. Everybody helps everybody get to the grid.
Then the sky decided to get involved. Tornado warnings came through Friday afternoon and sent the whole paddock into the block buildings for a while, everyone standing around waiting it out before track time picked back up.
Between sessions, Blackhawk Farms paddock
Saturday, first official race
Saturday was the real thing. First official race of the season, grid forming up, and I ran it clean start to finish. Came home P3. Small field, just three Formula Vees out there, so I’ll take it with a straight face and a smile. A finish on the board is a finish on the board, and it’s one more step toward the license.
Race day, Blackhawk Farms
Sunday, rain turning to sleet
Sunday flipped the whole script. Rain came in early, then it turned to sleet, and the track went from grip to guesswork in about a lap and a half. Visibility dropped. Every corner turned into a decision you had to make on the spot, because the grip you found last lap wasn’t there anymore this lap.
I found the edge of that a little too well going through one corner. Around 60 miles an hour the back end let go and I was spinning, and for a second everything just slows all the way down, the car, your hands, your thoughts, all of it. You get it pointed the right way again, check your mirrors, and get back to work. That’s exactly what days like that are for. You don’t learn where a car’s limit really is from a book. You learn it out there, in the worst conditions the weekend can throw at you.
Got it collected, kept my head in it, and brought the car home for a second P3 finish on a day that would’ve been easy to write off entirely.
The weekend on paper
What it added up to
By the time we packed up Sunday night, Drivers School was done, the first of three required race weekends was in the books, and I’d earned my novice permit toward the full competition license. Two more weekends like this one and that box gets checked.
On to the next one.