The Secret Racing Test Tunnel No One Wants to Talk About, Some 300 feet below my perch, a road disappeared into the side of a mountain. I made my way down the heavily wooded, steep slope, sliding as often as walking. My shoes filled with dirt that was still moist from the spring thaw.
And then I was at the bottom, standing on an old roadway with weeds sprouting through the cracked pavement. I was staring at a new, shiny silver, domed structure that ran along the road for about 300 yards and ended at a decaying tunnel entrance. A stack of slick racing tires stood nearby, the final clue that I had found the place that symbolizes all that is fantastic about motorsports. Now I just had to figure out how to tell the story.
Ask anyone why racing matters and, inevitably, someone pipes up that motorsports produces new technology that eventually makes street cars better. While that might have been true 50 years ago, it's all too easy to poke holes in the statement today. Modern racing cars are so tightly regulated—to control costs and competition—there are few development challenges left for the creative engineering mind.
Racers, however, are a resourceful lot, and the most obsessed would gladly saw off a toe for a tenth-of-a-second advantage. They struggle and experiment and do move the needle forward, but in such minute steps, there's little to crow about except in some dense engineering paper. Since those improvements are usually invisible to the casual observer and no team would voluntarily disclose a secret advantage, we never hear about them.
Yet we all love the stories of the maverick inventor or innovator who gains an edge through genius and hard work. Remember Penske's acid-dipped Trans Am Camaro or the STP Turbine car that nearly won Indy? What about the 1997 McLaren MP4-12 "fiddle brake," a second brake pedal used on F1 cars to slow the inside rear wheel and help the car corner faster? It was banned in 1998. Those tales become part of motorsports lore.
In the winter of 2007, I got a once-in-a-decade tip about one such racing edge. While touring a scale-model wind tunnel in Indianapolis and listening to my guide explain the exorbitant efforts engineers expend to ensure the tunnel simulates the real world—they use precise, Ferrari-priced race-car models and rolling roads, among other measures—I asked why they didn't measure downforce and drag by driving real cars down a real road. I knew the answer—changing weather conditions would affect the results—but I wanted to hear him say it.What you need," said my guide (anonymous by request), "is a car tunnel. One about a mile long, and flat. Since it's underground, the air conditions remain relatively constant. That would provide solid, repeatable data." I chuckled. Who had the money to build such a facility? And where? "What if," he continued, "someone found an abandoned tunnel and repurposed it?" That was all the impetus I needed. I went home and started digging, unraveling a chain of events that began over 100 years ago.
"Yeah, I drove in the tunnel. In fact, I crashed in it," former IndyCar driver Darren Manning said last fall. If he had been standing next to me and not on the phone, I would have kissed him. After years of searching for information on the mystery tunnel, Manning was the first person I'd found who agreed to speak on the record about it.
Some backstory is required: That tip I got in Indy was no red herring. In the late 19th century, steel baron Andrew Carnegie and second-generation railroad tycoon William H. Vanderbilt joined to build a new rail line in Pennsylvania between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. Work started in 1883; the route crossing the Allegheny Mountains required nine tunnels and was nearly complete when skittish investors pulled out. Construction stopped in 1885, and the tunnels were abandoned until the Thirties, when some well-meaning bureaucrats repurposed the route and its tunnels to build America's first superhighway, the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Opened in 1940, the highway proved so popular that by the early Sixties, the two-lane tunnels were choke points on the four-lane motorway. By 1968, three of the tunnels were bypassed and again left to the elements.
Locals surely spelunked the abandoned tunnels, and their exploits eventually wound up on the Internet. I found one blogger who mentioned that the Laurel Hill Tunnel, about 50 miles east of Pittsburgh, looked to be in use. For what, the blogger didn't know, but he posted pictures of race tires stacked near the tunnel entrance.
Two of America's greatest racing enterprises have major ties to Pennsylvania. Roger Penske attended Lehigh University in Bethlehem, and Chip Ganassi's racing operations are partially headquartered in Pittsburgh. It didn't take a genius to finger Ganassi as the likely owner of the Laurel tunnel. He grew up in Pittsburgh and his father, Floyd, was a very successful businessman.
My curiosity had turned to a fever. As much as I love motor racing, I equally cherish sharing with others why racing is—beyond the track—such a fascinating pursuit. Here, I imagined, I had the makings of a tale that even those who care little for racing could appreciate. I pictured a bunch of lunatics tuning and tinkering with race cars in a secret underground test facility. In my warped head, the tunnel was the automotive version of Area 51, the airfield in southern Nevada where the government allegedly tests captured UFOs.
And then I was at the bottom, standing on an old roadway with weeds sprouting through the cracked pavement. I was staring at a new, shiny silver, domed structure that ran along the road for about 300 yards and ended at a decaying tunnel entrance. A stack of slick racing tires stood nearby, the final clue that I had found the place that symbolizes all that is fantastic about motorsports. Now I just had to figure out how to tell the story.
Ask anyone why racing matters and, inevitably, someone pipes up that motorsports produces new technology that eventually makes street cars better. While that might have been true 50 years ago, it's all too easy to poke holes in the statement today. Modern racing cars are so tightly regulated—to control costs and competition—there are few development challenges left for the creative engineering mind.
Racers, however, are a resourceful lot, and the most obsessed would gladly saw off a toe for a tenth-of-a-second advantage. They struggle and experiment and do move the needle forward, but in such minute steps, there's little to crow about except in some dense engineering paper. Since those improvements are usually invisible to the casual observer and no team would voluntarily disclose a secret advantage, we never hear about them.
Yet we all love the stories of the maverick inventor or innovator who gains an edge through genius and hard work. Remember Penske's acid-dipped Trans Am Camaro or the STP Turbine car that nearly won Indy? What about the 1997 McLaren MP4-12 "fiddle brake," a second brake pedal used on F1 cars to slow the inside rear wheel and help the car corner faster? It was banned in 1998. Those tales become part of motorsports lore.
In the winter of 2007, I got a once-in-a-decade tip about one such racing edge. While touring a scale-model wind tunnel in Indianapolis and listening to my guide explain the exorbitant efforts engineers expend to ensure the tunnel simulates the real world—they use precise, Ferrari-priced race-car models and rolling roads, among other measures—I asked why they didn't measure downforce and drag by driving real cars down a real road. I knew the answer—changing weather conditions would affect the results—but I wanted to hear him say it.What you need," said my guide (anonymous by request), "is a car tunnel. One about a mile long, and flat. Since it's underground, the air conditions remain relatively constant. That would provide solid, repeatable data." I chuckled. Who had the money to build such a facility? And where? "What if," he continued, "someone found an abandoned tunnel and repurposed it?" That was all the impetus I needed. I went home and started digging, unraveling a chain of events that began over 100 years ago.
"Yeah, I drove in the tunnel. In fact, I crashed in it," former IndyCar driver Darren Manning said last fall. If he had been standing next to me and not on the phone, I would have kissed him. After years of searching for information on the mystery tunnel, Manning was the first person I'd found who agreed to speak on the record about it.
Some backstory is required: That tip I got in Indy was no red herring. In the late 19th century, steel baron Andrew Carnegie and second-generation railroad tycoon William H. Vanderbilt joined to build a new rail line in Pennsylvania between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. Work started in 1883; the route crossing the Allegheny Mountains required nine tunnels and was nearly complete when skittish investors pulled out. Construction stopped in 1885, and the tunnels were abandoned until the Thirties, when some well-meaning bureaucrats repurposed the route and its tunnels to build America's first superhighway, the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Opened in 1940, the highway proved so popular that by the early Sixties, the two-lane tunnels were choke points on the four-lane motorway. By 1968, three of the tunnels were bypassed and again left to the elements.
Locals surely spelunked the abandoned tunnels, and their exploits eventually wound up on the Internet. I found one blogger who mentioned that the Laurel Hill Tunnel, about 50 miles east of Pittsburgh, looked to be in use. For what, the blogger didn't know, but he posted pictures of race tires stacked near the tunnel entrance.
Two of America's greatest racing enterprises have major ties to Pennsylvania. Roger Penske attended Lehigh University in Bethlehem, and Chip Ganassi's racing operations are partially headquartered in Pittsburgh. It didn't take a genius to finger Ganassi as the likely owner of the Laurel tunnel. He grew up in Pittsburgh and his father, Floyd, was a very successful businessman.
My curiosity had turned to a fever. As much as I love motor racing, I equally cherish sharing with others why racing is—beyond the track—such a fascinating pursuit. Here, I imagined, I had the makings of a tale that even those who care little for racing could appreciate. I pictured a bunch of lunatics tuning and tinkering with race cars in a secret underground test facility. In my warped head, the tunnel was the automotive version of Area 51, the airfield in southern Nevada where the government allegedly tests captured UFOs.
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