This morning I had the privilege of spending a couple of hours meeting up with Norm DeWitt, a Facebook friend and author of the well-respected book, “Making it Faster”. Norm has been in and around motorcycle and car racing since the 1960’s and his list of contacts reads like a who’s-who of the sport over the years.
Norm, a San Diego native, trained as an architect and was already heavily involved in car racing. At the end of his third year he was offered the chance of joining the space shuttle programme with NASA but decided that he really needed to finish his studies so he passed.
A successful career as a driver morphed, by accident as is usually the way, into a career in journalism though he has no formal qualifications in the area. That led to a long association with motorsports at the highest level in both the USA and overseas. He has written for all the respected journals that cover the sport and has carte blanche with teams and racing administration organisations world-wide (except for the FIA for which he doesn’t have a high opinion).
This morning’s meeting was a great opportunity for me to pick his brains on the state of the sport, especially here in the USA. Unsurprisingly, he despairs of the state of motorcycle road racing at the moment. As the author of the definitive story of how the American riders conquered Grand Prix racing in the 1970’s and 1980’s, Norm is better placed than just about anyone to comment on the subject. He looks back at the golden era of Roberts, Rainey, Lawson and Schwantz and notes that the last time that road racing even approached that was the 90’s. “The last great era was the Mladin/Spies domination of AMA,” was the reply.
He expanded on Mladin a little more and I was fascinated to hear his perceptions. “Nobody played mind games like Mat,” he said, “If he thought that someone was threatening him, there were no lengths to which he wouldn’t go to try and psyche them out.” He told the story of how Mladin had placed a garden gnome outside Jason De Salvo’s pit tent just to annoy him (de Salvo is very short). Mat was also very good at winding up Mary Spies, Ben’s mother (this was said with a twinkle in his eye indicating that he enjoyed seeing her discomfited).
He noted that road racing is shrinking here in the US and that he doesn’t really see how it can be dragged out of the malaise.
My next question was about NASCAR. Norm was equally down-beat. “NASCAR is in serious trouble. Crowds are down all over,” he said. “Charlotte Motor Speedway is tearing down some of their grandstands because it’s too expensive to maintain them when they are not being used.” I did think that it was also better for TV if the smaller crowd was contained within a small area. When I asked what he thought the problem was he said that he thought that people were just bored. “The Car of Tomorrow experiment has failed. Making the cars all the same and just changing the sticker kit has taken away the ability of people to identify with the cars.” (are you listening, V8 Supercars administrators?)
I asked him if the racing was contrived and he said no, though he did say that some of the rules seemed to make it appear that way. The “debris yellow flag” did, however, bring a gale of laughter and an “Oh, that,” response.
It was a similar response when we moved on to IndyCar racing. Like me, Norm traces the death of open wheel car racing to the acrimonious ChampCar/IRL split of the 90’s. “Indy 500 is still the best, though, but the cars are all the same, Formula Dallara and the racing just isn’t interesting.” Like me, Norm longs for the old ChampCar days of 940bhp low downforce cars.
Having become friends with the names that I remember and respect, Dan Gurney, Mario Andretti, Jacques Villeneuve and many, many more, I wished that I had had HOURS, not just minutes to pick his brains about these legends of the sport. But he was prepping some articles and getting his media accreditation for MotoGp at Indianapolis this weekend ready, so we had to call a halt.
Before we left I bought a copy of Norm’s book which he signed for me. I’ve already started reading it and it’s a fascinating read.
Tomorrow I head to Huntington Beach to visit with Danny Thompson and talk to him about land speed records, racing on the salt and his legendary dad, Mickey. I hope the car is there and I look forward to taking lots of pictures.
Does life get better?