MEETING THE CHALLENGE

[Music] I've driven over 200 mph many times in Indianapolis and in Europe, but it always gets your attention. >> There's a lot of satisfaction in racing, not only for me as a driver, but also from my crew chief, for my engine builder, for the people who are involved in timing and scoring. And it comes together in a beautiful form. >> You've got to try and go as fast as you can. And sometimes that involves risks. Even if it means pushing the car to the edge of the road when there's no guardrail and a 5 or 6,000 ft drop off. Sure, I'm aggressive, but you've got to temper that if you want to win. >> You go down a strange road at night at 90 mph and you think that the road goes straight over that blind crest, but you never know. Five men from entirely different walks of life who happen to share a passion for automobiles and driving fast. When the weekend comes, they change their business suits for driving suits. 55 mph for a foot planted firmly on the firewall. Five men meeting the challenge. This is Charlotte Motor Speedway in North Carolina. A track that mixes racing on the high banks with a tight infield road course. Joe Vardy knows it like the back of his hand. >> The more crowd there is, the more it makes me want to drive harder. It's like, you know, you owe it to them to put on a show, to make a good race out of it. They came here to see you all race. And everybody's responsibility there is to be the best they could be. Joe won a Purple Heart in Vietnam. came home to Tampa, Florida, got into racing, and within a few years had won a national championship. He's a competitor. Show him something, and he'll try to find a way to do it better than you can. It's something new every race. Every race you're wondering, you know, you've wor about five or six guys all the time. Just like, man, if he goes a second faster, I'm going to have to go 2 seconds faster. What did I do to make the car go 2 seconds faster? [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Cal Shok in the black and yellow car there. He was born in Baghdad in Iraq. Started an air conditioning company and wound up air conditioning the whole Middle East. >> It's a lot of fun driving in this city. It is solely for front-wheel drive cars, modified to a very large extent. They go 150 mph. They have tremendous cornering abilities, excellent braking systems, and looking out that windshield, if you're only going 150 in those particular cars, it feels like you're going 220. Watkins Glenn, upstate New York, a track with a history. Men such as AJ Foy and Sterling Moss have raced here and won. Today, Cal Shet will win and take a step closer to a national championship. When you cross the finish line, there's a certain sense of elation. Some of us even develop knots in the throat and uh tears in the eyes. I guess this happens when you win your first races. Not that we all become old hands at it. I think every race is as important as the race before it and contains the satisfaction of that weekend. >> Doug Shepard, automotive engineer. His brand of competition is different from Joe Vardies and Cal Shokett. Doug is a rallyist. Rallies are races on public roads closed for the event, usually back rows, occasionally main street, which gives the fans a rare chance to watch the action. The cars run one at a time against the clock, and the events are typically 300 to 600 m long, lasting between 12 and 16 hours. The route of most rallies is kept a secret until the last moment so nobody gets to practice it. Just before the rally begins, each team is handed a route book which describes the course in detail and the navigator using maps and finely calibrated odometers plus an onboard computer keeps track of precisely where the car is so that he or she can tell the driver what kind of a corner to expect over the next blind rise. The concept is simple. Its execution, however, is not, which is why a lot of rally cars wind up in the ditch. >> In rallying, you know, you've got your co-driver with you, and I almost wonder if there isn't a psychological reason for that, which is is the driver has to show someone what he's capable of doing, okay? Because here you are, you're out in the woods, you know, for 12 miles. There's no one that sees what you're doing. You know, there's literally hundreds of corners and you yourself know you're doing it well. But it's so reassuring when it's over to have someone sit there and say, "That was really good. [Music] Doug Shepard was a navigator for many years. With his engineer's mind, the calculation, the precision was second nature. As a navigator, he won the national championship four times. He switched seats because there is something about Doug that is not placid at all. Something about his engineer's mind that doesn't have to have everything filed into neat little niches. Being a rally driver, you're sort of uh the junkyard dog of of race drivers and and racing lines and techniques because you're going somewhere where you've never been before and you sort of have to make do and you because you can't see all of a corner in the beginning. you you start on a certain approach and then you find that the corner does something other than what you expected and you suddenly you adjust the car and make the most out of where you are. And if you'd ever get a chance to go back and do that one again, it'd have been totally different. In every rally, the driver faces hundreds, thousands of decisions. And on this day, Doug Shepard made no mistakes and won by a wide margin. Pike's Peak 14,110 ft tall. Each time John Crawford has raced to the top, you set a new record. Three tries, three records. I think with Pikes Peak being the second oldest race in the United States. I feel the tradition when we drive. I think of the Louis Uners and the names in in motor racing that have been successful here. Carnelli Jones, Mario and Bretty Allenser Senior, Bobby Uner Senior, Alencer Jr. Quite a list of people and I feel fortunate to be a part of that. When you get above the tree line, there's a great many fast corners that you can't see around and you're required to late apex, which means that you have to run to the edge of the road and cut across the road. And when you're out on the side, you can't see the bottom. And so you're forcing your mental attitude to keep wide when all of your instincts tell you that if you do that and you slide off, you're going to fall until you're an old man. So those types of things give you a real feel here that you don't get anywhere else. Pikes Peak gives you that feeling of awe at what can happen if you screw up. But Crawford doesn't screw up. Past the switchbacks called the W's. Past the devil's playground and the bottomless pit he climbs. His instincts telling him he's doing it faster than ever before. [Music] And it is a new record. John Crawford, the man of the mountain, has won again. The scene was a track near Columbus, Ohio, a government testing facility thought to be the fastest oval anywhere in the world. Steeply banked, 7 and 1/2 m long, perfectly smooth, a vast, abstract sort of place, perfect for attempting something so unconventional that no rules applied. No record existed. The goal, squeeze the theoretical maximum out of a car with a tiny 2.2 L 4 cylinder engine. The car was handbuilt. The engine a technological marvel incorporating twin turbochargers, four valves per cylinder, twin overhead cams. Graham McCrae has an engineer's background and reputation for staying cool in critical situations. He was the perfect choice as driver. Graham would be fastened into the car's capsule-like cockpit, unable to get out quickly if trouble struck. It was early afternoon, a light cross wind blowing. This was more than anything a high performance research project, a chance for engineering wizards to flex their muscles. But you were quickly aware that risks were being taken here, that Graeme McCrae had become the automotive version of a test pilot, venturing into unknown territory in pursuit of information which might someday benefit the ordinary motorist. [Music] I see this sort of a program as teaching the engineers that are designing the automobiles more than they need to know just for the road car. But uh I think it is an advantage. Uh I think if the limit of your engineering is what you see on the public roads then at any one point you can be in trouble. Whereas if their engineering is far beyond what is needed for the public road, then I think you feel a lot safer. >> Come on, baby. 19 >> 192. >> A lap at 192 mph, then one at 194. Finally 195. An achievement that exceeded every expectation. Wow. For a brief moment, a brave man had given us a glimpse of tomorrow's technology today. Four cylinders pushing a car close to 200 mph. It made you realize that in the future, less might be more. After all, Graham McCrae, Cal Shet, Joe Vardy, Doug Shepard, John Crawford each had taken a car and asked something different of it. Each had pushed the limits of what cars and men can do a little further.