Friday, May 4, 2012

WEEKLY QUESTION: The Gross Edition

The Monaco crowd frowns on this sort of thing, but we're glad a quarter of our readers take pleasure from the megarich's utter horror. (Eric Rood photo)


In last weeks' question, The Rusty Hub asked at which overseas track our readers would most want to race their crapcan. Unsurprisingly, 35 percent of our readers would throw their jalopies around Germany's motorsports mecca Nurburgring. Coming in second was the famed Monaco Street Circuit with 24 percent of you no doubt wanting to see the horror on the faces of the megarich residents when a Pontiac Fiero's Iron Duke calls it quits and oils the Piscine.

The Rusty Hub's editorial board was initially shocked to see endurance racing mecca Le Mans finishing third with 17 percent, but we then figured many readers were probably smart enough to know that the Mulsanne Straight would be the car's (and likely the driver's) final resting place. Thirteen percent of our readers have cheaty enough cars to think they can to scale to the top of the Mount Panorama Circuit; most $500 cars would grind to a halt and then roll back down before reaching the Cutting. Rounding out the choices were a handful of Eau Rougers for Spa-Francorchamps (6 percent), one vote for Silverstone, and no love at all for Monza. Additionally, reader Michael (Let's call him Michael the Masochist) made a suggestion in the comments section: "Paris-Dakar in a crapcan anyone? Anyone?"



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This week's question asks you to weigh an important and complex cause-and-effect relationship about an issue that affects endurance racers everywhere. So here's the situation:

Your rustbucket has miraculously worked itself into the race's Top 5. Before strapping into your hopeless heap for a scheduled maximum-length stint, you wisely shotgunned a half-gallon of Brawndo1. However, it's a cloudy autumn day and you did not anticipate that the car's interior would be a breezy 45 degrees2. Rather than sweating it out--as you thought you'd might--you instead feel the sports drink migrating beyond your stomach. You hope for a bit that your bladder and the fuel gauge may share an inverse relationship but are mortified to find the fuel tank does not empty as quickly as your bladder fills. Meanwhile, your snug five-point harness feels poised to burst your swelling urine-balloon each time you enter that cursed parabolic turn with a compression.

Finally, 82 minutes into your stint with your fuel gauge mocking you, you relieve the pressure by urinating in the seat3. You welcome the warmth and the smell isn't too nauseating because you mostly expelled water. Feeling better for a bit, you turn the team's fastest lap of the weekend and finish an otherwise uneventful stint. You've even forgotten about your wet seat until you pit with the fuel gauge needle pinned to the E. And then you remember you have teammates. Oh god, you have teammates! And you pissed on the padded seat, in which someone will now have to sit!


How will your teammates react when they find out you peed in the seat during a long stint?

Look to the top of the right-hand column for the choices. If the answer you have in mind isn't on the list, check the "Other" button and tell us in this post's comments about your teammates' confusion/revulsion/convulsions. Hell, leave a comment here even if you choose one of the provided options to tell us why you chose it.



1It's got what plants crave.


2This is the temperature in Fahrenheit. Both of our international readers may know this as 81 degrees Celsius. Or 81 kilometers or something.

3It's not unheard of in racing; stories abound of drivers in many series micterating upon the seat. Formula 1 driver Narain Karthikeyan said in a recent interview that it's a common practice among his contemporaries. But no one takes the wheel after F1 drivers.

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