Jamie Howe: At the 4Front

The great thing about heading to Southern California each year for the Grand Prix of Long Beach is that there’s usually just as many off track activities as there is there is racing on track! Between visiting Porsche Motorsport North America, having a once-in-a-lifetime experience at Camp Pendleton and working the Toyota Pro Celebrity and American Le Mans Series races, this was one week I’ll never forget.

It all started Wednesday morning when I had the opportunity to visit Porsche Motorsport North America in nearby Santa Ana. We got the entire tour of the impressive facility, but we were primarily there to shoot a feature for the Patron GT3 Challenge by Yokohama broadcast from Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca next month.

Porsche performed an actual GT3 engine rebuild for us in their shop. They were able to do the build in just several hours (with the help of extra hands) so the whole time-lapse will be shown in the GT3 broadcast. ...

Thursday was the big day at Camp Pendleton. Before we even went, I was so excited because we had gotten the itinerary from the commander out there and it was all written in military code. I had to call my uncle to ask him what various codes meant. I learned that “MRE”‚ is simply a “Meal Ready to Eat.” In fact, they had it so planned out that they put on our itinerary the exact time we were to leave our hotel in Long Beach to get there in time. It was completely structured, which was fantastic because we got the complete military experience.

Our whole connection at the base came through Chris Neville, as his brother-in-law is commander of the Assault Amphibian School Battalion. Along with Chris, I was joined by Brian Till, a few SPEED producers, as well as Corvette Racing’s PR team, Oliver Gavin, Olivier Beretta, Jan Magnussen and Doug Fehan.

We basically had AAV 101. They parked three different amphibious units outside for us and we went through each one. It was interesting to learn that they always travel in packs of three. One AAV is where the soldiers are, one is a communications unit while the third one is a recovery vehicle.

It’s insane how small they are on the inside. In my unit, there were only three people in the back, the driver, the second-person in-charge (we would call him the crew chief) and the shooter. Normally, they would put 21 fully loaded soldiers in that space! The soldier that was back there with us was in one that had over 30 people.

It was a pretty intense experience watching the AAVs over the water. They did a whole demonstration just to see what we would be doing. They launched them into the water and did the whole formation and came back onto the beach. Seeing them going from land into water and back to land in a matter of seconds is amazing because they’re such big pieces of machinery. They’re fully diesel-powered and they’re loud and clunky. It’s everything you’d expect from a traditional diesel vehicle and nothing like what we’re used to on the racetrack.

When we actually got in them, it was amazing how much it messes with your mind. You can’t see anything outside, as you’re literally in a box. You can’t see if you’re going into hostile territory, if you’re under water or above water. You completely lose all perception because it’s so loud and dark. I don’t know how soldiers do it for hours. We were in there for 15 minutes and I was already losing my bearings!

For more, visit Jamie's blog at SPEEDtv.com.

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