The passing of a Canadian Motorsport legend: Sam O'Young
12-17-2008, 04:04 AM
#1
Drifting
Thread Starter
The passing of a Canadian Motorsport legend: Sam O'Young
It is with sadness that I share with you the passing of my racing mentor and coach, Sam O'Young. He passed away from a heart related issue at the young age of 62. Sam was the co-founder of the VCMC Motorsport Club, which boasted 380 members when I was president in 2002-2003.
Sam's legacy and teachings will be carried into future generations through his son Darryl O'Young (winner of the Macau Porsche SuperCup race and currently racing in various SuperCup championships around the world) and through the hundreds of students he so selflessly taught.
I had the good fortune of being taught by Sam one-on-one when I went karting with him as my coach. His attention to detail and his fierce competitiveness were incredible. If I may, I'd like to share a few examples.
In preparing my race kart, you'd think that it was a full-on F1 team the way Sam set the kart up. He corner weighted it and bent the chassis to make sure that the entire setup was exactly perfect. He'd do this after every race weekend to ensure that each tire was working exactly equal regardless of what we did to the chassis on the previous race weekend.
When we'd go out for practice, Sam would use a gear ratio that was not ideal for qualifying or the race and would then instruct us to pull times as if we were using the right gear. His thought process was that, at the regional level, if we can't dominate, then we have no chance at the national or international level. Furthermore, he wanted to "psych out" our competitors who would walk over and look at the gears we were running. Sam's drivers were always known to have the hot setup so it was common for our competitors to come over and copy us. He'd partially cover the gear so that the competitor would have to really strain to see the gear number. This would be all the more amusing to Sam because he knew the gear ratio they were copying was all wrong for the race.
When we'd qualify, we'd use a taller gear than the race and he'd give us heck to ensure we came out of the bottom corner with absolutely no oversteer or understeer so we could maximize our straight speed and lap time advantage. Of course, our competitors would see this and copy our tall gear. In the race, without the luxury of the optimal line going onto the straight, they'd lose tons of time trying to get the engine back into the powerband; we'd leap out of the corners and draft by the guys with the taller gear, much to the amazement of the other drivers. Sam messed with the minds of our competitors and drove them mad!
Before every race, he'd personally check the friction of each tire and the axle. He'd adjust and adjust and adjust until there was so little friction that you could lightly turn the wheel and it would seem to turn in perpetuity. Anything less than a perfectly setup car was unacceptable to Sam. I remember his quote that a "clean race car is a fast race car" so we'd always have to ensure our cars and karts were spotless before going out.
When it would rain during the practice day, Sam would not allow us to use rain tires. He'd force us to go out in the rain on full slicks. This would make us into moving chicanes and the laughing stock of the other drivers. We'd sometimes spin in a straight line going down the straight as the tires aquaplane through puddles. He'd keep telling us that winning in the rain was all about confidence and not about tires. Sure enough, several months later, we were waiting on the grid to start a race and it started to spit. Because it wasn't raining hard enough, the race director called it a dry race and off we went on slicks. Three laps into the race, it starts to pour at Tradex as it often does out there. With so much experience on slicks in the wet, We dominated our races. Even to this day, I love racing in the wet and it's all due to the lessons Sam taught us that season.
The greatest lessons I learned from Sam did not actually come on the track, but they came in the dinners after racing. When I won my first kart race, Sam spent 2hrs tearing me apart for the mistakes I made on lap 2, 6 and 8 and the specific corners that I screwed up. It was a tremendous life lesson that I've carried into everything else in life: to win really means nothing if you won due to other people's mistakes or inabilities.
I owe a lot of my life success to guys like Sam O'Young, Joe Cheng, Johnny Sandhu and Pat Ma. They are my mentors and last week, I lost one of the best.
May he rest in peace in motorsport heaven.
More info on Sam's son Darryl O'Young: http://www.darryloyoung.com/
Sam's legacy and teachings will be carried into future generations through his son Darryl O'Young (winner of the Macau Porsche SuperCup race and currently racing in various SuperCup championships around the world) and through the hundreds of students he so selflessly taught.
I had the good fortune of being taught by Sam one-on-one when I went karting with him as my coach. His attention to detail and his fierce competitiveness were incredible. If I may, I'd like to share a few examples.
In preparing my race kart, you'd think that it was a full-on F1 team the way Sam set the kart up. He corner weighted it and bent the chassis to make sure that the entire setup was exactly perfect. He'd do this after every race weekend to ensure that each tire was working exactly equal regardless of what we did to the chassis on the previous race weekend.
When we'd go out for practice, Sam would use a gear ratio that was not ideal for qualifying or the race and would then instruct us to pull times as if we were using the right gear. His thought process was that, at the regional level, if we can't dominate, then we have no chance at the national or international level. Furthermore, he wanted to "psych out" our competitors who would walk over and look at the gears we were running. Sam's drivers were always known to have the hot setup so it was common for our competitors to come over and copy us. He'd partially cover the gear so that the competitor would have to really strain to see the gear number. This would be all the more amusing to Sam because he knew the gear ratio they were copying was all wrong for the race.
When we'd qualify, we'd use a taller gear than the race and he'd give us heck to ensure we came out of the bottom corner with absolutely no oversteer or understeer so we could maximize our straight speed and lap time advantage. Of course, our competitors would see this and copy our tall gear. In the race, without the luxury of the optimal line going onto the straight, they'd lose tons of time trying to get the engine back into the powerband; we'd leap out of the corners and draft by the guys with the taller gear, much to the amazement of the other drivers. Sam messed with the minds of our competitors and drove them mad!
Before every race, he'd personally check the friction of each tire and the axle. He'd adjust and adjust and adjust until there was so little friction that you could lightly turn the wheel and it would seem to turn in perpetuity. Anything less than a perfectly setup car was unacceptable to Sam. I remember his quote that a "clean race car is a fast race car" so we'd always have to ensure our cars and karts were spotless before going out.
When it would rain during the practice day, Sam would not allow us to use rain tires. He'd force us to go out in the rain on full slicks. This would make us into moving chicanes and the laughing stock of the other drivers. We'd sometimes spin in a straight line going down the straight as the tires aquaplane through puddles. He'd keep telling us that winning in the rain was all about confidence and not about tires. Sure enough, several months later, we were waiting on the grid to start a race and it started to spit. Because it wasn't raining hard enough, the race director called it a dry race and off we went on slicks. Three laps into the race, it starts to pour at Tradex as it often does out there. With so much experience on slicks in the wet, We dominated our races. Even to this day, I love racing in the wet and it's all due to the lessons Sam taught us that season.
The greatest lessons I learned from Sam did not actually come on the track, but they came in the dinners after racing. When I won my first kart race, Sam spent 2hrs tearing me apart for the mistakes I made on lap 2, 6 and 8 and the specific corners that I screwed up. It was a tremendous life lesson that I've carried into everything else in life: to win really means nothing if you won due to other people's mistakes or inabilities.
I owe a lot of my life success to guys like Sam O'Young, Joe Cheng, Johnny Sandhu and Pat Ma. They are my mentors and last week, I lost one of the best.
May he rest in peace in motorsport heaven.
More info on Sam's son Darryl O'Young: http://www.darryloyoung.com/
12-17-2008, 02:04 PM
#4
Burning Brakes
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Wow, what an excellent eulogy of sorts. H=It sounds like he was definitely more than a coach and taught you a lot of life lessons. I enjoyed reading that but a little too late on my behalf.
