CART experience (tiniest bit of Audi content)

["Jouko Haapanen" <joukoh@vtoy.fi>]

I had the pleasure of going to the CART race at the Milwaukee MIle last
weekend with a friend of mine, Tom Huschilt.  I got him involved in
motorsport during our freshman year in engineering, and we've been best of
friends for almost 15 years now.  He is an avid Audi nut, Urquattro owner
and owner of other assorted audis as well.  He is also a designer with Swift
Engineering as in race cars for Newman-Haas, Robbie Gordon, P.J. Jones etc.
Tom was also one of the ten or so original members of this list back when my
brother started it.

I've never thought too highly of the technical level of CART, but my weekend
spent behind the scenes, in trucks, tents, trailers and pits left me
convinced otherwise.  The challenge of designing a car to work on ovals,
superspeedways and road courses is no small task, and the race engineers,
crew and the driver have to be able to adapt to very different race setups.
I spent the weekend with Tom and the Aero guru for Swift, Mark Handford.  It
was exciting and eye-opening, although the misfortune of Michael Andretti
during his first pitstop kind of left a bad taste in the mouth.  The
technology is very high, but the cut-throat atmosphere of F1 is missing, as
there is even some evidence of inter-team communication and socializing.

I wore my Audi Sport outfit on the first day, as we thought it might be
funny to start rumours - "who's that foreign Audi guy hanging around the
Swift guys???".  Due to my experience in Milwaukee, I've decided not to go
to Montreal this weekend.  I don't think sitting in the grandstands is the
same as watching the telemetry at the pits and wondering if maybe a little
more front wing should be dialed in during the next pit stop...

Sorry for the non-Audi digression, I'll be returning to regular programming
in a week and a half.

Jouko Haapanen
Pori, Finland
(presently in Kitchener, Ontario)