A racing virgin’s first time
Sheer terror seized David Booth as he awaited flag at Montreal Grand Prix
I raced in last weekend’s Montreal Grand Prix, in Nissan’s newly minted Micra Cup challenge. Here’s a look at what it’s like to compete on motor racing’s greatest stage.
“Please God, I’ll do anything you want.”
Thus did 57 years of Christopher Hitchens-like atheism vanish into thin air, my skepticism of the existence of a higher power evaporating as nonchalantly as a promise to take the kids to the movies. This exercise in moral enfeeblement wasn’t the result of some imminent mortal danger or threat of financial ruin — I have faced both with far greater resolve than I showed last weekend — just the threat (or, in my mind, certainty) of complete and utter public humiliation. It all started so innocently. “Come race the Micra Cup with us,” I remember Didier Marsaud, Nissan Canada’s head of public relations, asking in a Parisian accent that could, I’m sure, charm monkeys out of trees. “It will be fun, just a little low-key racing with friends,” I think were his exact words.
What he had failed to mention was that, while the cars we’d be racing — Nissan’s bargain-basement Micras — would indeed be low key, the race itself would be held on Montreal’s Ile de Notre Dame. Yes, my first official go-at-the-green-flag/stop-when-you-see-the-checkered-flag race would be at the Montreal Grand Prix.
Equal parts fantasy fulfilled — every sentient motor head’s ultimate dream is to race in front of a GP crowd—and-living-nightmare—the “friends” Marsaud promised were like a virtual who’s who of Canadian motor racing. My anxiety reached a full DEFCON 1 when I found out that Richard freakin’ Spenard was ending 15 years of committed retirement to flog a Micra around the track named after his former teammate. That meant I would be trading paint with the man who mentored Gilles Villeneuve (and taught son Jacques, former F1 champion) — in front of 100,000 of the most knowledgeable racing fans in the world! The threat of humiliation was clear and present.
It’s amazing what Faustian bargains you can rationalize when faced with public degradation. You will adopt a specific ritual for donning helmet and HANS device, even though you are not remotely superstitious. You will wear your racing suit everywhere, hoping its Pirelli logo magically contains the talent you lack. You will buy three pairs of Nomex socks because you’re told racers suffer mightily with sweaty feet in heat-soaked cabins.
You’ll become a pit lane prima donna, demanding to know the exact tire compound the pit crew has selected. (“It’s a spec series, a#$^**e; they’re all the same,” will come the sardonic reply.) You’ll demand your seat be lowered. Then moved up. You’ll ask if the rev limiter has been reset to its 6,500-rpm maximum. Then you’ll ask again.
You will steal glimpses at better drivers’ in-car videos to see why Corner Two has you wheel-spinning toward the concrete wall rather than their seemingly effortless exit. You will plot your first corner tactics, contingency plans at the ready. You’ll ask how to draft. You’ll have to ask — because you’re such a newbie — how to pass. Heck, you’ll even have to ask which gears you should be using.
You will fret that you won’t know what to do when the green flag is waved. Hell, you’re so far back, you’ll worry you won’t even see the green flag being waved.
You’ll dive for holes in traffic that defy even the impossibly small Micra. You’ll play bumper cars at 160 kilometres an hour, 40 years of safety-first driving tossed out the window just because some ne’erdo-well supposes to claim your place in the draft.
You’ll wish ill on your teammate because, as anyone who has ever seen a checkered flag will attest, your primary competition is always your teammate, he being the one person who has, presumably, a comparable (lack of) talent.
You will claim, loudly, that you could have qualified “at least” two positions better if you just hadn’t missed that shift between Turns Four and Five. And you will become acutely religious, your last thought a desperate, “Please, I will do anything you want, just don’t let me embarrass my entire species.”
You’ll commit all these indecencies knowing the best you can do is move from a pitiful six-places-from-the-tail-end 18th on the grid to a more respectable 17th at the checkered flag. You will not regret the sleepless nights or the anxiety. Your only everlasting memory will be that of the checkered flag waving at the end of the Casino Straight.
Because this is a dream come true. This is the Montreal Grand Prix and it is the very pinnacle of motor racing.