BDC and WGDR in the Rearview Mirror

1: Backstory

Most of us have got a few seconds of video out there we wish didn’t exist.

No, this isn’t what you think it is. But it’s just about as embarrassing, and fortunately, our video crew has probably filed it away in some sort of long-term, cold storage where it’ll be very hard to find.

It got recorded about seven years ago during a dragstrip video shoot for a comparison story. On my right, the estimable Art St. Antoine was revving the hoarse-throated flat-six of a white Porsche Boxster Spyder. As I remember, it made sort of a whooping-cough sound. By comparison, my orange Tesla Roadster might as well have had its mouth duct-taped. Its instruments were glowing, its fan was whirring, but as we were discovering, Teslas were mute but ever-alert cars. Robots in a zombie trance until you point your right toe, and it suddenly streaks down the street.

Art and I were positioned in our respective lanes at our blue-collar dragstrip on the northeast corner of California Speedway. Way off to Art’s right, beyond the chain-link fence and the railroad tracks, was (still is) a scrapyard with a giant crane that looks like a steel brontosaurus. It appears to be slowly grazing on crushed cars. I guess it’s where you wind up when you run out of luck. I looked back down the dragstrip.

Suddenly my walkie blurts “Tesla—back up a foot.” I push the shifter button for reverse and relax the brake enough to move about a foot. They want us perfectly aligned for our drag race. “Porsche,” the talkie squawks, “Up about 6 inches.” The Boxster edges forward. “Tesla, back half a foot.” I push R to creep it backward. “Now Porsche, also back a few inches.” Art backs. “Tesla forward 2 inches.” I push D. “Porsche, back another inch.” Art backs again. “Tesla back an inch.” I press R. The cameras are rolling.

“Cars—are you ready?” Art and I nod. I hold the brake down hard and mat the accelerator pedal in preparation. The Porsche’s swelling revs are all we hear because—even trembling on the brink of jolting acceleration—my Tesla’s still silent.

“Five, Four. Three. Two. One –

Go!”

My left foot springs off the brake. And I accelerate backward so fast that it’s a good second before I can process the scene. There’s a cinematic technique called Dolly Zoom, which creates an illusion that the background is suddenly receding. Like how the beach shrunk behind Roy Scheider when he saw the tumbling kid and half-red surf in Jaws. I’m Roy Scheider in a Tesla beach chair staring as Art’s Porsche is surreally stretching away.

I hit the brakes. In all my D- and R-pressing, I’d gotten mixed up. The last button I’d pushed was … I guess, an R. I’m here to tell you that not many cars reverse as fast as a Tesla Roadster could.

Video: “Ahhh—yeah. I think we’ll try that again.” I was mortified. You know when you do something stupendously stupid and your first reaction is to look around to check if anybody saw it?  I was seeing guys standing up from cameras that just recorded it. For all the McLaren F1 slaloming and Ferrari F40 quarter-mile-ing and Porsche 918 figure-eighting I’ve done during 25 years of car testing (and always find ways to regale impressionable new interns with), I’m also always on the brink of reversing at full-tilt in a Tesla, too, I guess.

2: Luck

I like opening Google Earth to show people parking in Lot 1 at California Speedway in Fontana. Find where the 15 and 10 Freeways cross, go right and up a bit, zoom in, then zoom in some more, and you’ll see the smudgy black shape of a figure-eight pattern on the asphalt. It looks like a giant hand drew it with a 50-foot felt pen. I like to say I’ve left my mark on the world—and there it is right there. Its infinity-shaped path is an endless repetition of accelerating, stopping, and 240-degree turns that ultimately goes nowhere. And will fade away after the first rainstorm, anyway. It’s a metaphor for life, in a third of a mile.

If we were to drop ourselves down there next to it like real life Street View people—about three months ago during our testing for Best Driver’s Car—the figure eight’s path would be dotted with tire-scuffed orange traffic cones. Look up—the sky’s blue. It’s 8 a.m. Well, it’s actually kind of a warm 8 a.m., or maybe it’s my nerves. I’m shooting glances over at a small white box truck and its rolled-up rear door, which appears to have its mouth full of virgin Michelins on feathery aluminum-spoked wheels. Three guys next to it are periodically checking things on a Ferrari 488 GTB. The car: a wave of turbulent red froth, freeze-framed by a perfectly timed pause button. The tires: gummy black barrels about to be converted into kinetic energy, Einstein’s E=MC2 in automotive terms. Together, they’re a four-wheeled pinball loaded against a 661-hp spring and shot onto a craggy parking lot course of orange bumpers and paddles. Fun, right? Why’s my blood pressure hockey-sticking like this, then?

A few weeks earlier, associate road test editor Erick Ayapana was on the phone with the Ferrari’s handlers when he was asked if the car could be accompanied by a test driver to ‘confirm’ our test numbers. “What do you think?” Erick asked, with his ‘this is sort of weird’ look and patented 5-degree head tilt. Ordinarily, I’d say ‘No way,’ we do the confirming. But suddenly my talking muscles started channeling Edward R. Murrow’s. “Hmmm…. that would make for an interesting story.” Murrow raises his black-rimmed glasses to his forehead “Me versus a Ferrari test driver … I’ll get clobbered, but I’d like to read something like that.” Sacrifice your pride for the sake of a story. My Murrow-self felt slightly noble. An easy thing, actually, if—unlike Murrow—you have absolutely no sense of time or deadlines.

But here the Ferrari is, right there, right now. The deadline is today, and one of those three guys over there is going to gut my fragile driving reputation with his bare hands. Which one of them is my assassin?

A good lap in that car might be, I don’t know—maybe 23 seconds? When road test editor Chris Walton and I back-to-back figure eight really fast cars, a 0.1-second gap kinda stings. How badly is this guy going pound me? 0.3 second? 0.4? If I’m beaten by 0.5 second, will I notice that on the next test day I’m sent on local press trip to cover Hyundai’s new interior color palettes? Randy Pobst is flown in from Atlanta to fast-track young-gun Ayapana into our new full-time figure-eighter? And why don’t I ever channel Juan Fangio instead of Ed Murrow? Maybe it’s best to just walk quickly down the hall to the lethal-injection table and get this over with.

“Hi. I’m Kim—so which of you is the driver?” A young, medium-height guy with an olive complexion smiles and extends his hand. “I’m Donato Tanzillo. Development driver for Ferrari” Oh. And an Italian accent. I invite him to sit for a chat.

“So, ah, where do you do your test driving?” I warily ask.

“Fiorano. Monza. Nürburgring” he reels off. This guy’s the real McCoy. I glance at the parking lot and give a numb look: “I drive over there.” He looks at the parking lot. Donato, I’m realizing, is one of a handful of test drivers at Fiorano, Ferrari’s famous factory test track. Now I’m thinking it’ll be 0.6 second. A few years ago, I drove around Fiorano with one of these guys, and every time he thought I wasn’t graceful enough with the steering or pedals, he’d actually hit me in the thigh. “Smooother! Smooother!” he’d shout.

Remembering that, I spontaneously pointed in a random direction and exclaimed “Hey, look over there!” and as Donato turned, I feigned running away—an effective diversionary tactic I learned from The Princess Bride (switching wine glasses). But no use. We agree that I’ll go first.

Leaning into the open driver’s window of the fast-idling 488, Donato emphasizes one thing “Don’-ta turn the manettino to ‘ESC Off’. If you’re smoo-the, you’ll be faster in CT (traction control-off) mode.”

Of course, this could be a trick. It might actually be faster in ESC Off. Maybe he’s hoping I’ll use CT and go slower while he cleverly uses ESC Mode. Is this the sort of man who would put the poison in his own goblet?  Or in his enemy’s? Has he memorized The Princess Bride, too, and is one step ahead of me? I study his face. He’s giving nothing away.

I might have driven a thousand of cars around the figure-eight course, and on paper, a handful of them ought to be faster than the 488. The difference is that none of those has prancing horses fastened to their cowl’s flanks.

Symbolism: There’s a prancing horse on Porsches, too—recognizing horse breeding in historic Stuttgart. McLaren’s swoosh is either a stylized version of the wing-tip vortices. Here’s a way better story, though: In 1923, the mother of Francesco Baracca, an Italian fighter pilot who died in action in 1918, gave then racing driver, Enzo Ferrari, the prancing horse emblem that graced her son’s plane. There are giant churches and there’s Rome’s St. Peter’s. Does the Vatican Guard really need to wear those clothes? Italian tradition is colorful, dramatic, and always calculated to affect you.

Or intimidate you—partly why it took me so many laps to settle down and start to understand the rhythm of the car. Finally, I pulled over and asked Donato to hop in for some pointers. But after a few more laps, he just smiled and said “It’s good. It’s good.” Instantly I swerved toward the MT crew along the edge of the parking lot; they gotta hear this. I climb out. Donato settles in and roars off in a series of rifle-quick gearshifts. There will be no last-second pardon from the governor now. My lap time of 22.7 seconds is going to last for another 22.2.

By the way, this is all happening while we were testing a live telemetry system (RaceCapture/Pro from AutosportsLabs) in tandem with our usual Vbox equipment. So I could see, realtime, Donato’s times as they quickly started shrinking. And then—plateaued. I knew in an instant knew what had stopped the drop; I’d hopelessly worn and overheated this set of tires. “There’s nothing I can do. The tires are gone” Donato says, as he glides up.

Really—honestly—I didn’t mean to do that. I’m not that smart. Later, new tires are bolted on and I trim off another 0.1 second, careful to hand Donato his car back with competitive rubber. But in a gesture I’ll forever cherish, he says no, there’s no need for him to rerun the car for time. He’s satisfied. Donato smiles. He then flies around the track in spectacular, smoke-boiling drifts to finish them off before swapping again for Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. Our associate online editor Michael Cantu quickly texts me: “I hear you beat the Ferrari test driver!” No. I met a gentleman. Lucky day.

3: Buttons again

The twist in this year’s World’s Greatest Drag race video was that at the very last instant, the perky Mazda Miata RF would retreat from the starting lineup and we’d slot in the Ludicrous-quick Tesla P100D. So while the other eleven gas-powered cars are brrrrraping their throttles, the only EV here would glide silently into position using its Summon Mode. Our squadron of Best Driver’s Cars would be joined by one without a driver.

However, its radar seemed to be seeing phantom obstacles and stopping short of the line. So with the clock ticking, we decided to simulate it; the idea was too funny to drop. I climbed in with a walkie-talkie, crunched down, and began operating the brake and accelerator with my hands per features editor Christian Seabaugh’s off-camera directions. “Forward, forward. Keep going,” Christian instructed. I pressed the accelerator with my right hand. “Slow, slow” I lightly palmed the rubber pedal with my left hand. Sharp-eyed Tesla aficionados will realize something’s up because Summon Mode would have automatically folded-in the side mirrors. Finally, Christian shouted “Stop! That’s it!” We wrestled helmets past momentarily pinched ears, and cinched our chin straps.

Positioning each individual car was a half-dozen serious-faced Air Force soldiers (off-duty, no charge to tax-payers) who would wave us forward with cupped fingers and then suddenly cross their forearms, our signal to halt—what’s normally seen through the acrylic canopy of a parking F16. Cool. On my left, Christian was pulsing his Ferrari 488 forward. This thing just doesn’t know idling; it’s either off and silent or a mechanical Milan Symphony Orchestra playing full tilt. I quietly crept the Tesla forward and tapped park. On my right, Chris—by far the best dragstrip pilot among us—was precisely inching the huffing Porsche 911 Turbo S into place. Even doing this, Chris is meticulous; he doesn’t make mistakes.

It was not lost on me that while I was being walkie-talkied into position, I was again in a drag race, in a Tesla, with the video cameras record lights red. Earlier, I’d hammered through a series of launches, slowly dialing-in my timing; after getting fully charged and waiting the 30 minutes for the drivetrain to precondition (the battery is warmed, the motors, cooled), you set Ludicrous, hold down the brake pedal, stamp the accelerator until you see Launch Mode Enabled appear, and then within 8 seconds you release your right foot and stamp it back down again. Within another 4 seconds, you pop your left foot off the brake and hang the hell on. We’ve Vboxed this very car to 60 mph in 2.3 seconds. The trick is to time the pedal motions so that when I hear “… Two … One … Go!” on the walkie, I’ve sequenced my footwork so I’m within the car’s final last four-second window.

Video: “Click—hisssh—Everybody ready?” sounds in each car and the cameramen along the course. “OK.”

I stand on the brake, then stamp down the accelerator and see the Launch Mode message. “Five!” Levi says. I release the accelerator. “Four.” I slap it down again. “Three.” My left calf trembles in anticipation. “… Two … One … ” I’m wide-eyed. “GO!” Knowing the Tesla’s advantage is its instant response, locomotive torque, and phenomenally precise electronic spooling out of tire slip (and that Chris is thinking the same thing), I pop my left foot off the brake after the G of Levi’s “GO!”

The entire field floods away from me. Oh no. What the hell is happening? This time I’m Roy Scheider staggering back from the stern of the Orca when he first sees the shark. Eleven cars suddenly shrink away, a wide smile of colored, shrinking Chicklets, with one tooth missing. The one is directly in front of me.

“Ahhh—yeah. I think we’ll try that again” Levi says.

What happened? The car broke. It blew a fuse. Can’t be me. Terrified it was me, I’m scanning the instrument screen for any exculpatory error warnings. Just as I hear Chris, who made the expected Lewis Hamilton launch, asking “what happened?” I see the gear selector display. I’m in park.

During our waiting, the last button I’d pushed was … I guess, a P. I forgot to put it in drive. And, of course, it was again multiangle videoed for Levi Rugg’s growing catalog of blackmail material. “Well, at least that’s better than reverse,” I shrugged. How—my co-driver’s might wonder—could the guy who beat the Ferrari test driver forget to put his car in drive for the World’s Greatest Drag Race?

These guys haven’t seen that Tesla Roadster video.

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