Cone Curse of the Whitworths

A heads up to anyone who codrives with the Whitworths anytime in the future… They hit so many cones, that these cones start to haunt the other drivers in the car!

A funny thing happened on Natalie’s last run on Saturday. I was filming the run and saw something pecular. After a short time on the course I noticed a cone under the back of the Corvette, I was pretty sure that Natalie didn’t hit a cone at the beginning of this run so it had to have come from Beth’s previous run in which she blasted into a cone right before the finish. I hadn’t bothered to look under the car when Beth got back from her run and we were prepping the car for Natalie, had I looked I am pretty sure I would have found a cone somewhere near the rear diff.

Back to the run, I was intently watching this cone, thinking, if this thing flies out I need to be sure to make sure the course workers don’t count that as a downed cone for Natalie’s run. Needless to say, it did pop out from under the car, and what’s the worst thing it could have done? It took out another cone on course, so, the Whitworth cone didn’t count for a two second penalty, the one it hit and knocked from its box was. This would have been Natalie’s fastest run by over a second on Saturday, and would have ended up putting Natalie in second place for the whole weekend, not just for Saturday. As it was, Beth managed to best Natalie on Sunday by a total of .7 seconds for the weekend, had the Whitworth effect not taken place Natalie would have won by .3!

Oh well, such is life with the Whitworths :). I’ll have video from this event up later in the week.

On a similar note, on my 2nd run on Saturday I picked up a cone on a big spin after the finish, it remained under the car until I was making my way through grid. I head it pop out from under the car, looked in the rear mirror and saw it standing there in the middle of grid. It remained in that exact spot until cleanup on Sunday, no one knew why it was there (besides me) so no one bothered to move it!