The other day an Australian actress passed away. She was well known for her acting but better known as the host of a TV quiz show from back then called, “The Weakest Link.” She played the part of an acid-tongued compere very well and, when the time came for contestants to be axed from the show she would say, “You are the weakest link, goodbye.” and the poor contestant would slink off the set.
In somewhat the same vein but with no connection, I was also reminded last week that the first telecast on Australian TV of the Indianapolis 500 was on memorial day weekend in 1967, 51 years ago (I know, scary, eh?). Being an avid car racing fan as I was back then I well remember sitting up all night to watch thee telecast in glorious black and white. The telecast lasted for hours with preliminaries taking up a lot of time and even then the telecast was liberally sprinkled with ads. It finally finished at around 0400 on Tuesday morning after which I attempted to get a little sleep (unsuccessfully) before heading off to school. It was, however, an amazing race. With the domination of the front-engined “roadsters” having been broken just a couple of years before by the invasion from Europe of the grand prix aces of the day, the field was mostly made up of rear-engined cars of both European and domestic construction.
The big “unknown” in 1967 was the STP Special entered by Andy Granatelli’s company of the same name. It was powered by a gas turbine engine, a step that too many of the traditionalists saw as being one too far. Having just endured seeing their beloved front-engined “dinosaurs” being made obsolete, many couldn’t face another onslaught of technology so soon and there were mumblings about banning the car even before it had a chance to run (Indy had a name for banning cars that didn’t quite fit the mould). However, it was allowed to run. Parnelli Jones put the car on pole and was cruising to victory when, with just four laps to go out of the 250, the turbine car coasted to a stop, its race run. A $6 bearing in the engine had failed and the STP car was done. The following year, despite the officials hobbling the turbines with restrictions on their performance, the TWO STP cars again dominated the race only to fall out within sight of the flag again caused by the failure of relatively cheap components. The officials made sure that that was the end, introducing further performance restriction for 1969 and Granatelli ran up the white flag, went back to reciprocating engines and the turbine experiment was over.
Of a more catastrophic nature and certainly a sadder one, it was found that the space shuttle “Challenger” disaster was caused by a failure of “O” rings, again a relatively cheap part.
So often it is in life that a robust effort is brought down by a failure of a seemingly insignificant component in the structure. When we were doing our big trip in the Minibago, we broke down at a little town called Flaggy Rock in Queensland. The van was taken to the nearest town, a little place called Carmilla, and there the local mechanic struggled for 4 days to get the van to fire again. Despite consulting the internet and calling all manner of VW “experts” he was unable to get it going again. As you know, our trip finished there and the Minibago came home on the back of a tilt tray, a distance of 1700kms. It landed in my mechanic’s yard where, after a thorough inspection, he determined that the high-tech components that we were sure had somehow failed were all operating correctly. The REAL reason why the van had stopped and would not start again was that the earth strap, which runs between the engine block and the chassis, was broken and so the electrical system was not making a complete circuit.
I don’t know how much one of these parts cost but I bet it’s cheap. It was replaced and the engine started straight away!
So the lesson, if you want there to be one, is clear. In motoring, in motorcycling AND in life, beware of the weakest link because it is more often than not that it will not be the BIG thing that brings you down, but the small one. And, a final word on the matter. Do what you can do to make sure that YOU are not the weakest link. Too many people rely on you for you to ignore this most important requirement.
