Sebastien Bourdais, the defending champion and Champ Car World Series points leader, isn’t afraid to admit it. He’s scared when he drives. Cars are flying around. Accidents can happen anywhere. So can deaths. Yep, Bourdais does not like getting behind the wheel – when he drives on the streets back home in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Bourdais isn’t alone. All those drivers in the Grand Prix of Denver blitzing around today at upward of 200 mph? They’re more afraid of you on Interstate 25.
Being a professional race-car driver does have its advantages, especially at rush hour. However, they’d rather be going 180 on a racetrack than 35 in a neighborhood.
“I hate driving on the streets,” Bourdais said. “A lot of people have no idea what they’re doing. They’re under the influence of drugs and talking on the phone. They don’t even look at what they’re doing. I’m often very scared.”
Think of that the next time you race off for a gallon of milk. Here are pro drivers, used to driving wheel to wheel with high-powered machines in excess of 200 mph, and they feel more helpless in their Audis on a Friday night.
You can understand why. Pick up any newspaper and find one that doesn’t report a traffic fatality. A death on the racetrack is national news.
“As far as I’m concerned, the roads we drive on daily are more dangerous than the racetrack,” said Randy Ruhlman, points leader in the Trans-Am series. “Because on the racetrack you’re surrounded by people whose mind-set you know. Everybody’s geared into the same thing. You’re with them week in and week out. You know their tendencies, and you kind of know what they’re going to do.
“On the road, I’m just like any other driver out there. I’m surrounded by a bunch of people I have no clue how their day’s going. They’re on cellphones. This guy’s late for work. A guy’s missing his flight. Somebody’s angry at his wife. Who knows what’s going to happen out there?”
Part of it is the car. Take the Champ Car. It has a five-point harness that won’t let you move in any crash. You also wear a device that keeps your neck from moving too far in any direction. The car is formed around your body. It’s padded, and the seat is molded around you. There are no windows to smash into your face. Of course, they all wear helmets and fire suits.
Some cars on the street can shatter like glass.
“I’m safer on the racetrack, no question,” said A.J. Allmendinger, a Champ Car driver living in Thornton. “These are probably the safest cars in the world right now. You see something that guys have went through and some of the wrecks we’ve had. Like mine, for instance, (in Toronto on July 10) when (Mario) Dominguez hit me over 100 mph, T-boned me, and we both got out and walked away.
“People ask me how I can even think about doing something like this. I go, ‘Let’s be honest. There’s a lot more accidents and injuries and, unfortunately, deaths on a road than in any kind of racing.”‘
For those of you who don’t know any better, here are a few acts of lunacy that can drive a pro race-car driver to road rage:
“Blocking,” said Katherine Legge, who’s third in the Toyota Atlantic points standings. “It just wouldn’t be allowed on the racetrack. They should move over. The inside lane is still supposed to be the inside lane, isn’t it? So why are they doing 50 mph in the outside lane? If they want to go 50 mph, that’s their right. But do it in the inside lane, dude.”
“Not watching their mirrors,” said Brandon Davis, the University of Denver sophomore in Speed World Challenge Touring Car circuit. “They just go back and forth, back and forth. That’s one thing on the racetrack you have to be good about. We have to watch our mirrors and make sure where everyone else is around us.”
“When you try to keep a safety margin and people sneak in, especially in heavy traffic,” Bourdais said. “You try to be safe for everybody, and guys don’t care.”
Not that all these folks haven’t occasionally shredded the book of traffic laws or common sense. When Allmendinger was 18, he took his mom’s Honda Accord and roared down a California highway at 130 mph. At least he didn’t get caught, by his mom or the law.
Davis wasn’t so lucky. In his senior year at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, Calif., he got in his dad’s Mercedes and went 105 down Interstate 405. Unfortunately, the California Highway patrolman who saw him could go 110. Davis already had a point on his license.
He had his license suspended for six months his senior year. Why was he going so fast? Davis laughed.
“I was late for a driver’s (education) meeting and the road was clear,” he said.
Tim Wiens, a Speed World Challenge GT driver who owns the FirsTier Bank in Louisville, once got two speeding tickets within five minutes in eastern Colorado. On Christmas Day.
“What were the odds that there were no cops between where I was, Sterling, and the Nebraska border?” Wiens said. “So after getting that ticket I thought, ‘What are the odds?’ So I hammered down and within five minutes, I got a similar, very large, speeding ticket from a county mountie.”
Once when Legge returned from an extended stay in the United States to her native England, where they drive on the left side, she got in her car. She was bone tired. She started driving down the wrong side of the road. She immediately made a hairpin turn and went the other direction.
“It was pretty embarrassing,” she said.
All, however, say they are very respectful of the laws in their road cars, which range from Audis to SUVs, much more so than the average Joe. They even claim they’re less aggressive now than before they got into racing.
“I get it all out on the weekend,” Ruhlman said.
After all, even race-car drivers don’t want to take their work home with them.
Staff writer John Henderson can be reached at 303-820-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com.
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Grand Prix of Denver
What: 90-lap Champ Car race
When: 1:45 p.m. start today; warm-ups begin at 7:30 a.m.
Where: Pepsi Center
Tickets: Call 877-336-4701 or visit www.gpdenver.com
TV: 1:30 p.m., Speed Channel
