Snow and Flying Lizards down the back straight at Mid Ohio
The drive is about 10 hours from Athens to Lexington. Eleven if you go through Virginia to avoid 5pm traffic in on 285 in Atlanta. We were again camping, but this time the RV was in use, so we had to pull out our tent and sleeping bags. Tent camping with camera gear and other electronics, fun. Actually, it was. Largely due to our cool neighbors and the fairly agreeable weather. It was thoroughly unwarm Thursday night and it rained on Saturday morning off and on, but we did not die of heat exhaustion; a certainty in Georgia this time of year. On to the cars!
There were quite a few of them zipping around. The Speed World Challenge, Atlantic Championship, ALMS, Indy Lights and IndyCars were all there. Very few moments of daylight occurred without cars of some kind on the track. We arrived after all on track activity stopped on Thursday, so Friday morning was my first chance to shoot at Mid Ohio. I have watched races on this track so many times that I figured I knew it well. I was wrong. Once there I was completely turned around and had to rely on my map just to understand where I was. We were camped just off of the backside of the Keyhole, so I started shooting there as soon as ALMS practice started on Friday morning. The Keyhole is a fairly boring place from which to shoot. Two straights with decent elevation change and what is basically a hairpin.
Flying Lizard #44 exits the keyhole at Mid Ohio @2009 Darren Pierson/DPerceptions
Have I mentioned shooting through photo holes is irritating? The mid morning sun was pretty harsh as well, but I think I pulled a few out from the 1st session. Towards the end of the first practice on Friday, I was up the back straight pretty far. Nearly to the Flag Tower. I shot there for a while, working on some slow shutter pans. The there was a red flag. One of the guys in the stand looked over to me and I shouted up “what car is off?”. ”We don’t know, we think its the 9″, came back. A few seconds later, the same guy yelled down, “Do you want to come up here and shoot for a while?” Um…yes. That would be cool. A vantage point completely unrelated to photo holes in the fence. Excellent. I had two things against me. (1) There was only five minutes left in the session and (2) I quickly realized that it would be very easy to make my images accidentally look like I was shooting over the fence on a tall ladder. I tried shooting wide, really wide with a 20mm and extra tight with a 300mm. In the end, the best images came from a moderate zoom of ~105mm. I was a bit bummed that I had so little time up there, but I do think I got a few good grabs.
Session over, we headed back to camp for lunch. I thought that the afternoon session would be best handled in Madness. So we walked over the bridge by the paddock and settled in for some twisty bits. Soon after arriving, one of the Challenge Cars decided to overshoot the braking point and ended quite deep in the kitty litter. For once, I was actually shooting at a proper focal length and shutter speed to pick up the trek through the pea gravel.
#02 Gruppe Orange finds the gravel trap at Mid Ohio ©2009 Darren Pierson/DPerceptions
Its quite fun to be shooting in and out of elevation changes. I love being able to throw the track into the immediate foreground or drift the track into the background. Elevation is the key.
The Saturday morning session started off with rain and IndyCars. I have limited experience shooting open cockpit cars. Let me change that: Aside from Star Mazda, Formula BMW, IMSA Lites and P1/P2 cars, I have little experience shooting IndyCars. I will say that the IndyCar mirrors are ALWAYS blocking the diver’s faces. Not sure about this phenomenon, but I will cover the IndyCar part of the weekend in another post.
We love watching races in the rain. On TV. Meaning the cars are somewhere else in the rain and we are ensconced on the couch in the dry. We awoke to the sound of rain on our tent. Not a real big deal since my gear is water resistant, but not much fun either. I have been looking at Think Tank raincoats for my gear, not buying, mind you. My raincoat doubled as a tent for about 20 minutes of wet shooting and then the rain pretty much went away for the day. The race itself was great fun. The Cytomax car kept surprising pace and ended up second in P2 and Fourth overall. Not too shabby for the 1st time out. Also not too shabby was Corvette racing’s GT2 debut with a 2nd and fourth in class.
Corvette Racing GT2 #3 pulls into the pits for a late race fuel stop ©2009 Darren Pierson/DPerceptions
They nearly had a second and third, but the #92 BMW pipped the #4 in the last few laps of the race. Both Dysons had problems, one on their end, one thanks to another. Gil de Ferran, after announcing his retirement and subsequently taking pole, won the race outright. Lowes-Fernandez racing took P2 honors.
Mid Ohio Sports Car Course is a great venue to see a motor race. My complete gallery of the 2009 ALMS Acura Sports Car Challenge is available for your use.
Thanks for reading and looking!
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