Tag: Lemans

Thirstda’s Wandering Thoughts

TL/DR: AI is fucking up. And that’s fucking us up.

One of my childhood passions were cars. From that grew an intense interest in auto racing. It wasn’t something that I shed as an adult. Passions aren’t easily surrendered. Yeah, as an adult, auto racing, with its environmental impacts, ridiculously increasing costs, and inherent dangers, lacked substantial commonalities with the human condition and the challenges Earth and humanity face. I excused myself for decades with the subterfuge that we don’t want a vanilla existence. Year after year I followed sports car and Formula 1 racing. For a while, I also hunted NASCAR, IMSA, and IndyCar news. But sports car and Formula 1 was it for me. As I aged, the passion became muted and dulled. Part of that was that the sport just wasn’t as competitive. Aspects of its relevance to real existence also troubled me, though, and that grew.

One of the Internet’s commercial strengths is that it notices what you look at, and then baits you with more of the same. The net noticed I checked out LeMans this year. It came up with reminders about Ford’s victories at LeMans in the 1960s via the Ford GT. That effort was highlighted not long ago in a movie called Ford v Ferrari.

A story about Ford’s 1967 LeMans victory grabbed my eye. Driving a red Ford GT Mark IV, American drivers Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt took LeMans in record form. I built a model of the car within a year. It sat on my dresser among my other models until I moved out of Mom’s house four years later. Eagerly, I read the story. Then I wondered: how many drivers have won both the 24 Hours of LeMans and the Indy 500?

I put it to AI; how many drivers have won both the 24 Hours of LeMans and the Indy 500?

AI responded, slightly paraphrasing, Lewis Hamilton won it in 2011 and Max Verstappen has won it four times recently.

WTF?

I know that Lewis Hamilton has never raced at Indy or LeMans. Nor has Max V. Both are Formula 1 champions.

The entire AI answer was fantastically fucking wrong. Now, if I didn’t know the sport, I may have been fooled by the answer. Which pushes the wonderment in me, how many people consult the Internet for truthful and factual information and are being fed wrong answers? How many lack the resources or awareness to challenge the veracity of what they’re being fed?

For shits and grins, I asked AI again. This time, one source said, “…while only Foyt has won both the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Indianapolis 500.” Another told me, “Only one driver has won both the Indianapolis 500 and the 24 Hours of Le Mans: Graham Hill.”

So, both answers are wrong, because I knew before asking that Foyt and Hill were the only drivers who accomplished this.

Wrong info on the net is not new. We’ve joked for years, “It was on the Internet so it must be true, ha, ha.”

But the shit is getting deep. The way that wrong information is advancing and spreading with AI’s gentle assistance, the joke is now on us.

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A Riddle In A Dream

I had a dream in which I ended up wondering, while in the dream, if I’d dreamed what I was thinking. I’ve gone similar routes to this before, but this one ended up as a laugher to me.

I was racing at LeMans in a D type Jaguar. The race had just begun. My co-driver (name not given, never seen), had qualified us, putting us at the front of the grid (but not pole). I was starting the race for the team. I managed a great start, and was battling for the lead.

From my point of view in the open cockpit, another driver and I raced our cars down a long straight, engines screaming, car shaking and vibrating around me. Taking the car to the absolute limit, holding it there, I edged my car’s nose ahead past a competitor on my right.

Now for a surreal bit. There was a small, bright green, bean bag hanging to the left along the straight. Whoever reached the bag and pulled it down was the leader of the first lap. I raced toward it, pulling ahead of the other car. Veering left, I threw my hand up and caught the bean bag.

Wasn’t over, though. We were hurtling toward the final corner. My competition wasn’t making it easy for me. They were holding back to brake at the last second; they also had the inside line, the true racing line. Coming up on the corner, I counseled myself, “Wait, wait,” watching the competitor. When he finally braked I told myself, “Now, brake, downshift, turn.”

I guided the car into the turn. Teetering on the edge of cohesion, the car progressed through the long righthander. Then I was through, in the lead, leading the first lap of LeMans. Jubilation roared through me as crowds cheered me on.

Then, as the segment ended, I pulled into victory lane.

I’d won the race.

Still in the dream, I was stunned. I’d won LeMans. As it was a D type Jag, that was in the fifties. Sitting before my computer, I searched on “Seidel Wins LeMans”.

Then, I thought, hold on. I couldn’t have won LeMans in the fifties; I wasn’t born until 1956.

And in the dream, I wondered, did I dream that? It seemed so real.

As I was about to tell this to my wife, she brought a tall white man and his daughter into the room. I was like, “Excuse me, WTF, who are they, why are they are?” My wife brushed aside my questions.

The child went to play. The man joined me. Reading a newspaper on the desk beside me, he scoffed. “Mansfield is in trouble.” He scoffed again. “I’ve seen this happen before.” He blithered on about some other companies who’d been in trouble. “They’re going to need help. Search for Mansfield and help.”

I did as he directed. I was only typing with one hand, however, and kept screwing up the search. Then, dream shift, I’m in a writing class with other students. The instructor is telling us about four elements. I’m taking notes.

A man comes in and calls my name. He wants to know if I’m okay. “Yes, fine,” I reply, puzzled. The teacher tells the man that I seem fine, why is he interrupting the class to check on me.

“Because he sent a message that said ‘help’ on a computer,” the man replied. “We received his message.”

Realization rising about what happened, laughter spilled out of me. I explained that I’d been trying to do a search on Mansfield needing help but kept screwing up.

Two other men, stocky, with crew cuts, in suits, solemnly brought stacks of books to me. “What are these?” I asked.

“Help books,” one man replied. “You sent so many messages for help, we thought you could use these books for help.”

End dream.

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Remembering A Dad Moment

1971

Besides being a rock fan and fifteen years old, I was an auto racing fan. My father was in the U.S.A.F. He’d just returned from being stationed in Germany and was now stationed at DESC near Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio when I moved in with him. He surprised me with tickets to the premiere of LeMans with Steve McQueen.

Whenever I hear the movie’s opening minutes, I’m back in that packed movie theater, one of the few children in the place, remembering the movie’s beginning, and Dad. The start is just the sounds and images of racing cars of the era screaming around the French race track. To non-fans, it’s probably noise. But to racing fans, the sounds of Porsches and Ferraris of different-sized engines, Alfas, Corvettes, and Matras can all be heard as individual howls.

Dad had no interest in seeing the movie, but he knew I wanted to. So, thanks, Dad.

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Ford Wins LeMans

Ford won LeMans in 1966, and they won again today, June 19, 2016, fifty years later to the date.

When I was ten, this was important. The Ford GTs were the pinnacle of sports racing endurance cars, and one of the winning drivers, Bruce McLaren, was a racing driver I admired, so wow, Bruce McLaren, in a Ford GT, won LeMans. Groovy!

I don’t know where Dad was that year. Mom and Dad had divorced. I lived with Mom and my sisters in the Pittsburgh, Pa, area. Dad was in the Air Force, and I think he was outside of the United States. I think he may have been in Vietnam. My belief is fixed on Dad’s Ford Thunderbird. A turquoise hardtop convertible, that car was gorgeous. It was also sitting in my Uncle Pete’s garage in Penn Hills, Pa, alongside Uncle Pete’s white ’65 Mustang coupe.

Yeah, I was into cars.

Cars are what connect Dad and I to this day. When we speak, we chat about what we’re driving and what new car designs have, or are about to, come out. After the ’65 Thunderbird (or maybe ’66), he had a ’68 Thunderbird coupe, red, with a black landau top. He traded it in for a maroon ’74 Monte Carlo, but went back to the Ford Thunderbird, buying a white one in 1976.

Then he took on Corvettes, buying and driving three or four of them, having them as a second car while his primary vehicle was a pick up truck or SUV. There was one break in all of this when he bought a Cadillac. (Dad in a Cadillac is as strange as me in a Cadillac.) Memory isn’t as fixed about those cars. I was an adult by then, separated from him by life. But like him, I was in the US Air Force and enjoyed performance and sports cars. My first car I bought was a 1968 Camaro. Returning from the Philippines, I bought an orange Porsche 914 and drove it from West Virginia to Texas and back. It was left for a Pontiac Firebird, which I sold when we left for Okinawa. Returning from there, I bought a 1985 Mazda RX-7. The RX-7 was my Corvette, as I ended up owning three of them, trading in my black 1993 Mazda RX-7 R1 less than two years ago, after owning it for nineteen years.

When I call Dad later today, he’ll ask me if if I still have the RX-7 and then remember that I traded it in for a Mazda CX-5. He’ll mention his step-daughter’s Corvette, which he helped her buy. We’ll talk about the newly redesigned Miata, and I’ll ask him if he’s seen the new Fiat 124, based on the Miata. Besides the way I look, walk and talk, and the color of my eyes, hair and skin, and my build, there is no doubt I’m my father’s son.

We are car guys.

 

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