Yahoo Autos John Phillips: Testing the Champion Motorsport 911 Turbo RSR Was Bad for My Health
My doctor recently insisted that I lose weight, and I appeased him by promising twice-weekly visits to Cubs’ Athletic Club. Of course, Cubs’ is a sports bar where I drink Labatt draft at a pace that will eventually earn me a commemorative wing at the Hazelden clinic.
I have another method for losing weight.
Last month, I was assigned to test the Champion Motorsport Porsche 911 Turbo RSR. To do so, I had to rent Palm Beach International Raceway, but it was solidly booked for months—except on Good Friday. “I’ll take it,” I shouted, not realizing I’d immediately have to justify the $6800 rental fee.
“Apparently, I need to drive on a racetrack in a privately owned, 640-horsepower Porsche worth $399,000,” I explained to our office manager, who fell silent. For some time, she studied a ceiling tile that was apparently of vast interest to her.
It got worse. With only 24 hours’ notice, try buying a ticket for a flight from Detroit to Fort Lauderdale on Easter weekend. It was like reserving space for your golf clubs on that last helicopter out of Saigon, except there was more shouting and the passengers were more poorly dressed.
I burned calories walking around my house at 4 a.m., drinking half-and-half to stave off a festival of acid reflux.
As far as their flights went, photographer Roy Ritchie and assistant Josh Scott eventually worked out a byzantine plan in which they’d fly into Fort Myers and Hertz their way the rest of the 125 or so miles. But by then, the Hampton Inn that I’d reserved announced standing room only. I recall rubbing my forehead, then spitting up a small amount of blood—more exercise.
“Listen, I have a problem,” announced tech editor K.C. Colwell, whose job it would be to conduct performance tests. The only flight he could arrange departed at dawn on the very day we’d rented the racetrack. “I should be there by noon,” Colwell reckoned. “What could go wrong?"
I pointed to a boil that had surfaced at the base of my spine. “Kinda shaped like Florida, isn’t it?” I asked our photographer.
“More like the size and color of an Ohio beet,” he said. I jogged to a pharmacy to buy salve. “Call me Mr. Fit,” I said.
“That won’t be a problem,” Ritchie replied. “You sure look like you’re having a fit.”
At dawn on the morning we’d rented the racetrack, I drove to Champion Motorsport to pick up my contact. He wasn’t there. But Champion’s test driver Bill Adam was, sipping Starbucks and killing ants. Adam is relentlessly optimistic—a trait that has routinely annoyed me for 40 years of our 41-year friendship—so it alarmed me when he said, “Looks like rain.”
I performed some quick math and said, “Bill, I’ve already spent almost $14,000 on this story, and if it rains today, my only backup plan is corrective surgery for this bout of colitis I’ve just started experiencing.” I began thrumming machine-gun paradiddles with my fingers.
“It’ll be fine,” Adam insisted. “We can rent a couple of those big track sweepers for probably less than $2000.” And that’s when rain exited the firmament as if from a million inverted hydrants, sluicing multiple directions with force sufficient to knock down palm fronds that then randomly clogged lanes of I-95.
“Lucky thing I’m driving your rental car,” Adam noted, happy as ever. Then he recalled the night that Hurricane Andrew barreled through. “I hid under a bar,” he recalled. “If you think about it, it’s like the perfect sanctuary.”
So I began scanning side streets for the nearest bar. But not to hide under. Unfortunately, it was 7:30 a.m. I told Adam, “Did you know I’m thinking about taking up smoking?”
“You’ll lose weight,” he said, beaming, then asked if I’d yet settled on a brand.
Test gear in hand, Colwell arrived at noon. “I think I can get zero to 150 mph,” he told me. “But not on the drag strip. I’ll try on the back straight. That way, if something goes wrong, I can maybe negotiate that final turn. Probably be exciting, though.” I walked to the track’s fetid lagoon and chatted nervously with a pair of sandhill cranes. One tried to hug me.
In the end, we successfully tested the Porsche. But it was 90 degrees, I soaked through two shirts and lost my hat, and my ears parboiled until they resembled cherry tomatoes. “Got three words for you,” said Adam. “Mel-a-noma.”
I also forgot to eat anything that day, and, by 4:30, I’d developed a jackhammer headache and the kind of lightheadedness familiar to ether addicts and fainting goats. Photo assistant Scott offered me some Krispy Kremes that had been crushed in the camera van. “Wanna go easy on those,” he suggested, “or you’ll get fat.”
"No, I won’t,” I countered. “I’m on a new diet. Start on Monday, lose six pounds by Friday. Saturday morning, around 11, you die.”
It really cheered him up.
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