The car is a write-off.
It’s not going to take crawling underneath to officially make the call, though of course they will. Mitsubishi Canada has taken a chance on this project, a huge, noisy, ballsy chance, and now the car sits crumpled, it’s carefully chosen stripes and decals torn, its metal obscenely lifted back from the front tires that bore the brunt of the sudden deceleration and jarring impact.
A project over a year in the making has come to a crashing halt – quite literally – before it felt like it even got started. The Targa Newfoundland has a day of prologue, a practice day, before it starts its week long run taking over the roads of Newfoundland in this annual September classic. It’s a novelty in the world of car racing; competitors can run anything they can get running and you see everything from a rather sedate Ford Taurus to the glamorous lines of a couple of Lotuses. What lies beneath might be a custom transmission and suspension that runs tens of thousands of dollars, or what came stock from the factory and sits in any domestic driveway.
The Mitsubishi Lancer Ralliart plunged into the culvert beside the road was a new car, but it had no top shop modifications other than the pretty wrapped design sporting the logos of people and companies who believed in this venture. They’d all taken a leap of faith – for most people, the rally is challenge enough, let alone doing it with hand controls installed so Roll With it Racing’s paraplegic driver could operate it.
For over a year, Brian Donato had been honing his advanced driving skills. His instructor, Rick Bye, is a Canadian legend in the world of car racing. For decades, he piloted Porsches through every incarnation of racing available, and he won. A lot. With the track behind him, he has turned his love of driving to working as an instructor, a not uncommon decision for those out of competition.
Until four years ago, Donato had been a top level ski instructor. A bad move felling a tree in his yard left him in a wheelchair for life, those legs that had powered his career and his passion now forever at rest. Struggling to move forward and knowing his love of cars could be the key, it was a physical therapist who has also worked with Rick who introduced the two men. It seemed like a natural fit.
What sets Bye apart from other instructors is his adamant belief in bringing his true love – car racing – to those who won’t otherwise get a chance. He shrugs it off, but what started as a split second decision several years ago has become a calling. At that time, he was asked if he’d take a young man out for some hot laps at a race track. Blind since birth, Aaron Prevost was working as a mechanic and his enthusiasm for the cars he couldn’t see, let alone drive, was infectious. Bye tore up the Canadian Tire Motorsport Park track with the 20-year-old beside him, both grinning, both unaware they were at the start of a special friendship that would only grow stronger.
The Mitsubishi Lancer Ralliart driven by Brian Donato at Targa Newfoundland.
Supplied, Russ Bond
With the track cleared for lunch, Bye let Aaron take the wheel. That day, a new driver was born, but so was a new calling. Coaching from the right hand seat, Bye fed Aaron instruction, his hand lightly on the wheel. Up and up went the speed, until it was impossible to tell this Porsche that went screaming by from any other. A dream took root, and Bye wanted to open up this world to more.
It’s a delicate balance, fraught with things like warm and fuzzy feelings next to images of totalled cars. Our language has changed; people are no longer disabled, they are other abled, or perhaps physically challenged. We don’t say handicapped; we don’t say blind; we don’t say crippled. But changing the labels – and we are a culture enamored of labels – doesn’t change immediate assumptions and long standing biases. Call it whatever you want, but watching a blind kid drive or a man transfer from a wheelchair to the driver’s seat of a rally car gives you pause.
A rally race isn’t like a race track. A place like Newfoundland isn’t like the rest of Canada, for that matter. A course that scrambles around the ocean’s edge, sections are closed for the race but fringed by spectators eager to catch a glimpse of the frantic action.
The two men had put in considerable track time back home in Toronto, and in hindsight, that might have been the genesis of some of the team’s eventual troubles. A rally course is loaded with distractions; a race track is build for just one purpose. A rally race is a different beast.
There was apprehension in the air in the days ahead of the race. Rick wanted Brian, with his family in tow, to have fun and experience Newfoundland. To share in the comradery between drivers and the small town love for a big-time event. Brian was set on being taken seriously, on being considered a “real” racer. Rick tried to settle him, to remind him that rally racing is about precision and being smooth, about having fun, not finding blind corners with top speeds. There were back and forths, but there had been the same conversation on many occasions all year. Rick wanted Brian to conquer and enjoy the Targa on his own terms; Brian wanted to be a racer. Was Bye overestimating his student’s ability, or overestimating his own abilities as a teacher?
Maybe a little of both. The problem wasn’t the car. The car was perfect for the event, and indeed, gave its own life protecting its occupants. Mitsubishi had been generous not just in tangible support for the program, but in emotional support for both men. The company had become an integral part of the heart of the team and the rolling circus that made its way to the east coast. Challenges were met and overcome; Brian looks like any other competitor behind the wheel, but there’s no getting around the fact the team had many more things to overcome than most teams would even have to consider. Both men share a tenacious spirit, a trait that could be as exasperating as it is rewarding.
The Mitsubishi Lancer Ralliart driven by Brian Donato at Targa Newfoundland.
Supplied, Russ Bond
“I told him to quit worrying about anything but driving. I told him he had all week to crash the car,” says Bye with a sheepish grin. He’s telling me this from his hospital bed in a St. John’s ER. Brian has been checked out and released, but Bye has a fractured vertebrae, two broken ribs and some troubling fluid around his heart. He’ll end up spending two nights in hospital before being released in a brace. “Let me tell you, when you’ve crashed and your back is killing you and the guy beside you is in a wheelchair, you get a little paranoid.” He’s expected to make a full recovery. In 1998, en route to a Daytona race, he was left in a coma after a highway crash and given a 2% chance of surviving. “Full recovery” is music to his ears.
The concerns now are both specific and far ranging. Bye won’t be pushed from his goal of continuing his work. A recent event he set up with the team’s other main sponsor, Gluckstein Personal Injury Attorneys, saw many of their clients experience a track day driving a modified car or as a passenger. Another young blind man, Robert Hampson, experienced what Aaron Prevost had previously, the chance to get behind the wheel. Magic isn’t the only word to describe that day, but it’s definitely one of them.
Can he keep people on board? The Targa represents a major setback, but one that has to be considered in the context of racing: the car did what it was supposed to, Brian’s error had nothing to do with his wheelchair, and Rick unflinchingly indicates his own need to differentiate between navigating and coaching. It’s tempting to dismiss a year in a few minutes, but Rick Bye will simply keep doing what he is determined to do: bring his love of driving to those who never thought they’d have the chance, to know it, too.
That crumpled car shows the end of a race, but nothing close to the end of the goal.
