Edu Pincigher remembers his days as a pilot, in the best Tom Cruise style, in a battle against his archrival in the Clio Cup
I have had some masters throughout my career and whenever possible I pay homage to them. I always talk about Luiz Carlos Secco, the best press office professional in the automotive area, Douglas Mendonça, who taught me how to test the cars on tracks and clarified all the technical doubts I had. I’m also talking about Bob Sharp, with whom I got precious tips on circuit riding. Thanks to Bob, I didn’t just become a better driver. But an improved driver.
SEE ALSO:
Some of these masters taught the art of text editing. It worked like this: when I started at Quatro Rodas, in 1991, I did the tests and comparisons with track measurements, interpreted the results and wrote the reports. Because he was at the beginning of his career, the texts were raw.
If it weren’t for the action of these guys, the texts would have been square, disorganized, without bossa. Jorge Tarquini, who would later become editor-in-chief of Quatro Rodas and today teaches Journalism in university courses, and Sérgio Quintanilha, who became editor-in-chief of the magazine and later edited Carro and Motor Show. Today he runs the Guia do Carro website.
The text editor not only embellished writing. He reordered the information, helped with photo editing, made captions, titles. He was also a more experienced journalist who pulled the reporter’s ear when the text failed in some information, or hid some important data. They rewrote my articles, but there I was, next to the guys, out of the pure desire to learn how to “write a final text”. I never got close to the talent of the two. But I learned enough. I became an editor at QR when I was 22 to 23 years old.
There was an end of the year when someone had the brilliant idea of creating a karting tournament with the newsroom staff, which totaled about 25 people. There we went to the Interlagos kart track. The magazine rented the karts and, detail, there was no “indoor kart”, with a 4-stroke engine, which would become popular years later: they were the competition karts, 2-stroke, “knife in the skull”. They were doing more than 120 km/h at the end of the straight.
And Quinta messed up. He may say no, but he messed up, yes. With the exception of two or three colleagues who had even competed in karting, the rest of the newsroom had never walked. It would be a fair competition. I never liked to lose even or odd, especially to Corinthians. And isn’t it that he went to Interlagos during the week and did several secret training sessions?
The regulation did not prohibit… lol. But it was a cleverness that could have been avoided, mainly because he didn’t invite me to go along. So much so that the Four Wheels GP arrived on Sunday, he was at the front. I don’t even remember what position I was in, nor did he. I just know that the guy got ahead of me. I was left with that crossed. Something of someone who wanted to surpass the master.
Cut to a few years later. At the invitation of Renault, I went to Londrina to participate in a stage of the Clio Cup, a single-brand category that the manufacturer maintained in the country in the early 2000s. As a PILOT. They were cars with 1.6 16V engines, light preparation, original gearbox. The Communication area had an incredible action: at each race, it invited two automotive journalists who had a notion of the track to participate in the race. I did free practice, qualifying, everything was the same as the drivers who really competed. Guess the other guest journalist? Sergio Quintanilha. It was the chance to pay back.
The team that took care of the “press cars” was Action Power, of the driver Paulo de Tarso (father of Tarso Marques). And the team boss was the former F1 driver himself. He knew nothing, the boy. I had never been to Londrina. Not even the Clio Cup. I got to know the track and the car in practice. My experience until then was only two Thousand Miles. I finished both, I did well, but I had never done a fast race. Something told me that I would enjoy it a lot.
As soon as qualifying for the grid was over, Tarso came to the door of my car and said: “do you want the good news or the bad news?” I asked for the good one. “You were only 1 second from pole.” Wow!! I started the workouts taking more than 2 seconds. It was great… But what about the bad one? “Between you and him, there are 25 other cars…” How about the competitiveness of the category? I may be wrong, but I don’t remember another competition in the country in which 25 cars ran in the same second.
The Quinta? I would start in 30th or 31st. Duty half accomplished.
I went to talk to Bragantini, the pole. I took my map back and asked for directions. “Artur, help here. From the second I take, 8 tenths are on the braking of the opposite straight, on the two left corners and on the hairpin for the entrance of the straight. How do I do that?”
“Edu, you come stuck on the straight. Do you know where the speed bump is, just before the braking point? There you release half a throttle, poke the brake with your left foot and point to the kerb outside (?!) It’s just to balance the car. He changes his foot, brakes hard at the entrance of the kerb, 4th, 3rd, strikes the steering wheel. The rear will come. It prevents steering and gives motor. You’ll go out with all four wheels in the dirt if you do it right, and you’ll go sideways less than a meter from the wall. As your braking is square, you go out and then take the climb to enter the straight. I think you’re losing about 400 spins…”
Worse that I understood everything. And I kept the lesson in my head. In the rest of the whole circuit, I only took 2 tenths from the guy. If I got it right, my performance would improve a lot. I thanked him and turned around to return to boxing. He called me and gave me one last message. “Do all this, but you have to believe that you will do it…” That would make all the difference.
You must already be laughing, right? Me too.
At the start, on Sunday, as I was in 27th, and was launched, I already put the car inside, with two wheels on the dirt (I really burned) and gained four positions. On the braking of the opposite, two cars found each other. In the hairpin, two more. Another confusion of braking on the pit straight, I found a way out and gained other xis positions.
Ah, my friend. I finished the lap still panting, but I understood the size of the feat – remember that I was a rookie in fast races, so everything was new, surprising, spectacular – when I closed the second lap and received the team’s license plate: Car 72 (I think that was it), P14. Look at that, doctor!! I gained 13 positions in the first two laps alone.
The 13th was about 15 meters ahead. And the 15th, much further back. I started walking alone. I rode for 1, 2, 5, 10 laps and nothing happened. Three more cars had broken down or crashed and I was already 11th. On the plates I received from the team, I was already turning 4 tenths faster than in qualifying, just by repeating what the car in front did. Behold, I remember Bragantini’s phrase.
It would have been better to keep quiet. There were 3 or 4 laps to go. Hopefully, if someone else left the track, I would reach the top 10.
I did everything he told me. Technically there was no difficulty. But the issue was not technical, but psychological. “You have to believe”. When the car came sideways, I gave the engine, my arms were crossed on the counter-steer, and I entered the earth. And the wall coming. And I aside. You had to believe, friend. But there was the wall. Getting closer and closer.
That’s when I took a little stand up. What for… I crossed the track, completely killed my speed and came back already catching the car that was coming behind me. I found the beak of the Clio’s hood in the middle of his door… lol. What a tremendous nonsense… I found myself back on the track, I put the car in a straight line, but the steering wheel was already all misaligned. I lost all geometry.
I spent the last few laps of the race defending myself from those behind. Worse is that these guys who rode from the middle of the pack to the back were not very talented, because they were used to walking… behind. Every overtake that someone came to make on me, I tried in vain to defend myself and I hit the car on different sides. I only know that I finished the race with all four sides beaten. Only the entire roof remained.
And the Quinta? I marked his car well and noticed him approaching on the penultimate lap. As I was turning 1s5 slower, everyone was arriving. Quinta, in fact, never knew about my obsession with not letting him pass. You will find out only now. And I didn’t let him. With 1 lap to go, I entered the pits, put the car away and retired from the race. He finished, responsibly. I don’t. But he didn’t pass me on the track, oh, he really didn’t.
