The Machine
Four days and four nights with the fastest team in JGTC
By Jared Holstein , Henry Z. DeKuyper , Josh Jacquot , Jared Holstein
Article from SPORT COMPACT CAR
56k friendly. Click on pictures to enlarge.
Wind that snaps aluminum poles like celery sticks plays happily through the infield of California Speedway. NISMO staff shuts the garage door against gusts that blow laptops off tables and sprays desert grime onto two of the most impressive racecars to ever bless any oval track in the United States.
We are to spend four days perched within shooting and writing distance of NISMO's GT500 JGTC All-Star race effort at California Speedway in Fontana, Calif., part of an orgiastic weekend of automotive delights thrown by GT Live last December. NISMO, short for Nissan Motorsports International, manages Nissan's major overseas efforts in JGTC and Dakar racing, in addition to developing an extensive line of tuner parts.
The plan is to waltz into the garage with a big Texan grin, a firm handshake, and, if necessary, a case of Sapporo beer. Disappointment is the product of expectation, so we anticipate nothing and hope only to ingratiate ourselves with our hosts.
We hover outside the garage for several hours awaiting official permission to set foot on hallowed ground. With consent offered after a flurry of phone calls, we move self-consciously into the garage, saying sumimasen, or "I'm sorry," with every other breath as no matter where we stand, we are in the way. The Japanese are unique. Watch a reel of social interaction among the Ubangi tribe in central Africa and fear is read as fear, anger as anger, complex emotion as real and immediate. Take a group of Japanese, throw in a dash of hierarchy and the situation is as obvious to an outsider as plate glass is to a sparrow.
Millennia of formality and discipline have produced a communicative dance of such nuance that our translator for the weekend serves less to translate words than make sense of silence, interpret the timing of nods and measure the sweep of bows. Us, well, we just belch and scratch our balls. Better to be a known quantity than attempt to sing in a chorus where we know neither the music nor meter.
JGTC offers some of the most competitive and technologically charged racing on God's paved earth. Both teams and drivers hope the All-Star race, a 200-mile enduro run at night replete with multiple pit stops, will be a chance to give the American public something to cheer, lust and hopefully campaign for. The GT Association, which oversees the JGTC, is attempting to globalize the series. A stagnant Japanese economy and competition from series requiring far less investment, like D1GP, necessitate such a move.
To that end, the GT Association is working with the FIA to change the name of the series to something that doesn't include the word Japan. Last year, a points event was held in Malaysia, with an exhibition round in China and one here. With a little luck and some letter writing, we might just get a points round stateside.
After 35 years, the Z-car still echoes its original formula: rear-wheel drive, six cylinders and styling cues paralleling contemporary European marques. The Z has always been a sales success, backed by one of the most winning legacies in sports car history, dominating both amateur and professional racing and even producing outright wins at Daytona and Sebring.
In its debut at the beginning of the 2004 season, the NISMO Z was instantly quick, winning its first race, and by season's end winning four of seven regular-season races, giving NISMO and drivers Richard Lyons and Satoshi Motoyama the JGTC GT500 championship.
The silver and red Z's before us are monuments to progress, fashioned from carbon cloth that weighs an ounce but can support a ton, alloys that stomach infernal temperatures and synthetic compounds that sacrifice their molecules for the greater good of metal, myth and flesh. One need not be an engineer to grasp the righteousness of these machines--passing children stare with open mouths and grown men respond with no greater sophistication.
The NISMO GT500 350Z is the most potent Z-car ever. But, some protest, there's barely enough Z left for this rolling masterpiece to actually be called a Z. We say if Michael Jackson can still be considered human, then a 350Z with millions in structural surgery can still be considered a Z. Ultimate, yes, but this speed utensil is finite. The machine that birthed this monster deserves greater praise. The NISMO team's solidarity goes beyond any cliched labels like "good teamwork." Individual investment is total, and the aggregate wins championships.
If Zen Buddhism can be partially understood by watching the interaction between monk, rake and a pebbled yard, so too can the NISMO machine from the relationship between crewmember, a rag and a 10-inch strip of paint. In the middle of the rear bumper lies a recess with five flat surfaces where a license plate would sit on a street.
A crewmember approaches the rear bumper with a rag and a bottle of detailer. The license plate surface is cleaned in a series of horizontal passes, followed by a series of vertical passes, leaving silver paint to glow through thick clear coat. The crew man turns over the rag and cleans the remaining three visible strips of recess. He turns the rag again, and the top of the recess, beheld only by darkness, is wiped once, then twice. Then he contemplates what dirt has transferred to the rag, turns it again, and cleans this 6-inch stretch a third time. Red and white NISMO short-sleeved button-up shirts, tucked into charcoal NISMO pants that fall over matching black and red New Balance sneakers, adorn all 24 crew men. There are 30 so dressed at domestic events, charged with the two factory cars in Xanavi and Motul livery. These are just the rehearsal clothes. All crew wear matching red and white fire suits on race day, with their names and blood types emblazoned on the waist straps. Movement in and around the cars happens in waves. The crew moves frenetically under, around and through the cars, followed by stretches of total stillness, save for the clicking of keys by engineers whose jetlagged faces are lit by the pallid glow of laptop screens.
Other teams sharing the large garage hang lit cigarettes from chattering mouths as they work. Wisps of smoke mix with the sharp odor of 100-octane Sunoco race fuel. The NISMO crew moves outside in rotations for their nicotine snacks. We see red duct tape gainfully employed righting a snapped Marlboro.
Even though the habitually clean cars and work surfaces are to us the fruits of textbook OCD, the team views them as disorganized and even embarrassing. Despite being a jewel in the crown of NASCAR, pit crews are unanimous in their contempt for the archaic facilities at the seven-year-old California Speedway. With cramped pits, a lack of compliance with the digital age and an inconvenient layout, it forces the odd tool to be unacceptably out of place.
It took seven 44-foot ocean containers to carry the machine's two factory cars and the digital infrastructure from Japan. And a machine wound this tightly must go home with all its parts.
Perhaps the machine's biggest strength is obsessive development of the cars. Ounces make pounds and tenths make seconds. So the hood hinges are carbon fiber. Fuel-filling hoses are tested to realize the slightest increase in flow. Pit tools are customized and redesigned to increase efficiency. The cars' steering wheels tilt up, rather than coming off, to ease driver egress and ingress, as some portion of a second was so gained.
No manufacturer, including Nissan, will disclose cost, but it's been rumored the NISMO JGTC program costs more than a major WRC effort, which would put the number somewhere north of $60 million annually. Nissan values each car at around $1 million. The rest of the dough goes to the tremendous amount of research, development, transportation, lodging and food for the machine.
The crew stretches TensaBarriers in front of the open garage doors because the team is fed a constant stream of enthusiasts with the rabid zeal of boy-band fans. The murmur of the swirling crowd is independent of the faces. The pan-Asian, pan-Latin and pan-whitey melting pot that is Southern California spews myriad tongues, mouths shaping words in two languages in the same sentence.
Universal, however, is MTV's contribution to the advancement of young minds. The dialect seemingly celebrated by all California youth, regardless of creed or color, is characterized by eloquence like "Yo, check this shit out yo!" Part and parcel to the JGTC experience are "circuit ladies," or umbrella girls. We meet Takayo Negishi, statuesque and sweet, whose specialties, according to the fact sheet we are handed, are tennis and sewing. Her hobbies are swimming and, of course, shopping.
California Speedway was built primarily to cash in on America's fascination with circulating billboards and features a large, high-banked oval with a flat, featureless infield road course. To the chagrin of teams, the standard 2.8-mile sports car configuration was traded for a shorter, modified 2.3-mile course using less of the oval. With no races on comparable tracks in Japan, tire engineers balked at the risks of placing unknown load and speed demands on their tires with these hugely fast, high-downforce GT cars.
Qualifying is good for NISMO; Richard Lyons places the Xanavi 350Z on pole, the NISMO-constructed privateer Calsonic Z is second, the Motul Z fifth and the G'zox Z eighth. The All-Star race is the first in JGTC history to be run at night, and the team manager is quick to point out the headlights weren't designed to cut a 150-mph swath through the night, but to signal slower drivers of a pass or intimidate competitors. The front of the cars light up like Pachinko parlors, bulbs popping and flashing in fanciful patterns.
Just days from the winter solstice, dusk comes early and a good portion of the 32,500 or so attendees move to the front straight. Twenty-two cars sit in formation on pit road, with umbrella girls in front of each and samurai-style banners on long poles announcing team allegiance. The announcement is made to clear the row, and fans stream out to the stands as close to 10,000 hp greets the night.
The mood in the trackside pits is no more welcoming than the garages had been the day before. Flat-screen monitors displaying car position and a live camera feed sits at the center of the pit. Retinas are already moored to the array of networked laptops that digest the data downloaded at every pit stop. Moving out on cold slicks, the cars weave into formation, which they hold for one restrained lap. The flashing yellow lights of the Nissan 350Z pace car round the final turn before the front straight, and it dives toward the bottom of the track. The pack stays tight as they near the start/finish line, then explodes forward like so many colored fireworks when the green flag is dropped. Vibrant and mottled flags snap in a stiff wind of fire and power, lapping at an average speed of just under 100 mph. Organizers place a slow chicane of stacked tires at the end of the brightly lit front straight to keep a handle on velocity and, presumably, to present the audience with some inevitable carnage. Flames lick the Inconel headers that exit just aft of the front tires as the Z, elegant as a brushstroke, slows for the chicane. One hundred and fifty mph is quickly dispatched as white and orange rotors burn through the haze of 1,000 mercury vapor suns.
The lead group remains bumper-to-bumper tight through slower corners, with the number one Xanavi Z, driven by Motoyama, in the lead. The second-place Supra hits the strobes going into the chicane, attempting to psyche out Motoyama. Rivalry makes for good press, close racing and the ever-profitable divisive fan split. NISMO's Z's have battled the high-revving TRD Supras all year, with the championship falling barely into Nissan's hands.
As the leading pack of cars stream past, the Z's 3.0-liter twin-turbo engine grunts in reply to right-foot orders, and barks with every flat-foot upshift. The Supra's V8, in contrast, sounds like a malformed kazoo. Ten laps in, 30 headsets in the NISMO pit crackle with the same bad news: three-car pileup in Turn Seven. The second-position Supra bumped and spun Motoyama's Z, landing it directly in the path of the fourth-place NSX. Back in the pits it's quickly decided that the damage is terminal. The car is lowered onto rollers by a host of mechanics and pushed out of the way. The machine is stoic, win or lose, and attention turns to the number 22 Motul Z. Those wowed by NASCAR pit cowboys will not be disappointed by the JGTC pit norikumiin (warrior). Helmets are donned, goggles slid into place, and the pit grows silent. The crew hops the wall when familiar HIDs bob down pit lane. The crack of the carbon/Kevlar splitter slamming into metal placard looses the crew on the car. The scene is more parlor trick than pit stop, slicks and drivers swapped with absurd rapidity.
The SCCA official monitoring the stop is just as unprepared for how fast the team dispatches a normally lengthy process. She's escorted aside by a crewmember as air jacks are retracted and fresh slicks chew into textured concrete, the Z howling back into the night.
Two hours after it began, the night reclaims its silence. The cars scattered in the garage post-race look like they've just finished a short track feature race. NISMO replaces every body panel on both Z's with new bits made of pre-impregnated carbon fiber, each one costing as much as a small German car. The team manager, Hitoshi Mizuki, describes the All-Star race best: "Very expensive evening."
The next morning a new winner is announced. The twin-turbo Epson NSX that crossed the line first did not complete the requisite number of pit stops in the time allotted. This gives the win, unofficially, to the G'zox 350Z. We corner Richard Lyons in the afternoon because, well, he speaks English. Affable, young and collected, NISMO and JGTC would be hard-pressed to find a better spokesman. Lyons had fun, but was disappointed that the high-downforce, high-grip potential of the cars was mitigated by a dusty, low-grip track surface and a preponderance of low-speed, bumpy corners.
GT500 cars generate up to 2.3 sustained g and peak as high as 3.0g on some courses in Japan. In this environment the Z's could only muster 1.9g. This sentiment is echoed by others who described the course as an unhappy compromise. Most are frustrated by their inability to show America the full dynamic potential of their cars.
The show is still impressive. We've been waiting for years to bathe in such mechanical bliss and, ignorant though we might be, remain damn impressed. Over the course of four days in the NISMO garage, what we initially perceive as contempt changes to indifference, then amiable acceptance. The NISMO mission statement reads, "Win," not "Be nice to journalists." And we learn, slowly, how to deal with the situation. Stay out of the way, respect the mission and be amazed by the precision. This is a well-oiled machine of victory and we are, understandably, grit.
Four days and four nights with the fastest team in JGTC
By Jared Holstein , Henry Z. DeKuyper , Josh Jacquot , Jared Holstein
Article from SPORT COMPACT CAR
56k friendly. Click on pictures to enlarge.
Wind that snaps aluminum poles like celery sticks plays happily through the infield of California Speedway. NISMO staff shuts the garage door against gusts that blow laptops off tables and sprays desert grime onto two of the most impressive racecars to ever bless any oval track in the United States.
We are to spend four days perched within shooting and writing distance of NISMO's GT500 JGTC All-Star race effort at California Speedway in Fontana, Calif., part of an orgiastic weekend of automotive delights thrown by GT Live last December. NISMO, short for Nissan Motorsports International, manages Nissan's major overseas efforts in JGTC and Dakar racing, in addition to developing an extensive line of tuner parts.
The plan is to waltz into the garage with a big Texan grin, a firm handshake, and, if necessary, a case of Sapporo beer. Disappointment is the product of expectation, so we anticipate nothing and hope only to ingratiate ourselves with our hosts.
We hover outside the garage for several hours awaiting official permission to set foot on hallowed ground. With consent offered after a flurry of phone calls, we move self-consciously into the garage, saying sumimasen, or "I'm sorry," with every other breath as no matter where we stand, we are in the way. The Japanese are unique. Watch a reel of social interaction among the Ubangi tribe in central Africa and fear is read as fear, anger as anger, complex emotion as real and immediate. Take a group of Japanese, throw in a dash of hierarchy and the situation is as obvious to an outsider as plate glass is to a sparrow.
Millennia of formality and discipline have produced a communicative dance of such nuance that our translator for the weekend serves less to translate words than make sense of silence, interpret the timing of nods and measure the sweep of bows. Us, well, we just belch and scratch our balls. Better to be a known quantity than attempt to sing in a chorus where we know neither the music nor meter.
JGTC offers some of the most competitive and technologically charged racing on God's paved earth. Both teams and drivers hope the All-Star race, a 200-mile enduro run at night replete with multiple pit stops, will be a chance to give the American public something to cheer, lust and hopefully campaign for. The GT Association, which oversees the JGTC, is attempting to globalize the series. A stagnant Japanese economy and competition from series requiring far less investment, like D1GP, necessitate such a move.
To that end, the GT Association is working with the FIA to change the name of the series to something that doesn't include the word Japan. Last year, a points event was held in Malaysia, with an exhibition round in China and one here. With a little luck and some letter writing, we might just get a points round stateside.
After 35 years, the Z-car still echoes its original formula: rear-wheel drive, six cylinders and styling cues paralleling contemporary European marques. The Z has always been a sales success, backed by one of the most winning legacies in sports car history, dominating both amateur and professional racing and even producing outright wins at Daytona and Sebring.
In its debut at the beginning of the 2004 season, the NISMO Z was instantly quick, winning its first race, and by season's end winning four of seven regular-season races, giving NISMO and drivers Richard Lyons and Satoshi Motoyama the JGTC GT500 championship.
The silver and red Z's before us are monuments to progress, fashioned from carbon cloth that weighs an ounce but can support a ton, alloys that stomach infernal temperatures and synthetic compounds that sacrifice their molecules for the greater good of metal, myth and flesh. One need not be an engineer to grasp the righteousness of these machines--passing children stare with open mouths and grown men respond with no greater sophistication.
The NISMO GT500 350Z is the most potent Z-car ever. But, some protest, there's barely enough Z left for this rolling masterpiece to actually be called a Z. We say if Michael Jackson can still be considered human, then a 350Z with millions in structural surgery can still be considered a Z. Ultimate, yes, but this speed utensil is finite. The machine that birthed this monster deserves greater praise. The NISMO team's solidarity goes beyond any cliched labels like "good teamwork." Individual investment is total, and the aggregate wins championships.
If Zen Buddhism can be partially understood by watching the interaction between monk, rake and a pebbled yard, so too can the NISMO machine from the relationship between crewmember, a rag and a 10-inch strip of paint. In the middle of the rear bumper lies a recess with five flat surfaces where a license plate would sit on a street.
A crewmember approaches the rear bumper with a rag and a bottle of detailer. The license plate surface is cleaned in a series of horizontal passes, followed by a series of vertical passes, leaving silver paint to glow through thick clear coat. The crew man turns over the rag and cleans the remaining three visible strips of recess. He turns the rag again, and the top of the recess, beheld only by darkness, is wiped once, then twice. Then he contemplates what dirt has transferred to the rag, turns it again, and cleans this 6-inch stretch a third time. Red and white NISMO short-sleeved button-up shirts, tucked into charcoal NISMO pants that fall over matching black and red New Balance sneakers, adorn all 24 crew men. There are 30 so dressed at domestic events, charged with the two factory cars in Xanavi and Motul livery. These are just the rehearsal clothes. All crew wear matching red and white fire suits on race day, with their names and blood types emblazoned on the waist straps. Movement in and around the cars happens in waves. The crew moves frenetically under, around and through the cars, followed by stretches of total stillness, save for the clicking of keys by engineers whose jetlagged faces are lit by the pallid glow of laptop screens.
Other teams sharing the large garage hang lit cigarettes from chattering mouths as they work. Wisps of smoke mix with the sharp odor of 100-octane Sunoco race fuel. The NISMO crew moves outside in rotations for their nicotine snacks. We see red duct tape gainfully employed righting a snapped Marlboro.
Even though the habitually clean cars and work surfaces are to us the fruits of textbook OCD, the team views them as disorganized and even embarrassing. Despite being a jewel in the crown of NASCAR, pit crews are unanimous in their contempt for the archaic facilities at the seven-year-old California Speedway. With cramped pits, a lack of compliance with the digital age and an inconvenient layout, it forces the odd tool to be unacceptably out of place.
It took seven 44-foot ocean containers to carry the machine's two factory cars and the digital infrastructure from Japan. And a machine wound this tightly must go home with all its parts.
Perhaps the machine's biggest strength is obsessive development of the cars. Ounces make pounds and tenths make seconds. So the hood hinges are carbon fiber. Fuel-filling hoses are tested to realize the slightest increase in flow. Pit tools are customized and redesigned to increase efficiency. The cars' steering wheels tilt up, rather than coming off, to ease driver egress and ingress, as some portion of a second was so gained.
No manufacturer, including Nissan, will disclose cost, but it's been rumored the NISMO JGTC program costs more than a major WRC effort, which would put the number somewhere north of $60 million annually. Nissan values each car at around $1 million. The rest of the dough goes to the tremendous amount of research, development, transportation, lodging and food for the machine.
The crew stretches TensaBarriers in front of the open garage doors because the team is fed a constant stream of enthusiasts with the rabid zeal of boy-band fans. The murmur of the swirling crowd is independent of the faces. The pan-Asian, pan-Latin and pan-whitey melting pot that is Southern California spews myriad tongues, mouths shaping words in two languages in the same sentence.
Universal, however, is MTV's contribution to the advancement of young minds. The dialect seemingly celebrated by all California youth, regardless of creed or color, is characterized by eloquence like "Yo, check this shit out yo!" Part and parcel to the JGTC experience are "circuit ladies," or umbrella girls. We meet Takayo Negishi, statuesque and sweet, whose specialties, according to the fact sheet we are handed, are tennis and sewing. Her hobbies are swimming and, of course, shopping.
California Speedway was built primarily to cash in on America's fascination with circulating billboards and features a large, high-banked oval with a flat, featureless infield road course. To the chagrin of teams, the standard 2.8-mile sports car configuration was traded for a shorter, modified 2.3-mile course using less of the oval. With no races on comparable tracks in Japan, tire engineers balked at the risks of placing unknown load and speed demands on their tires with these hugely fast, high-downforce GT cars.
Qualifying is good for NISMO; Richard Lyons places the Xanavi 350Z on pole, the NISMO-constructed privateer Calsonic Z is second, the Motul Z fifth and the G'zox Z eighth. The All-Star race is the first in JGTC history to be run at night, and the team manager is quick to point out the headlights weren't designed to cut a 150-mph swath through the night, but to signal slower drivers of a pass or intimidate competitors. The front of the cars light up like Pachinko parlors, bulbs popping and flashing in fanciful patterns.
Just days from the winter solstice, dusk comes early and a good portion of the 32,500 or so attendees move to the front straight. Twenty-two cars sit in formation on pit road, with umbrella girls in front of each and samurai-style banners on long poles announcing team allegiance. The announcement is made to clear the row, and fans stream out to the stands as close to 10,000 hp greets the night.
The mood in the trackside pits is no more welcoming than the garages had been the day before. Flat-screen monitors displaying car position and a live camera feed sits at the center of the pit. Retinas are already moored to the array of networked laptops that digest the data downloaded at every pit stop. Moving out on cold slicks, the cars weave into formation, which they hold for one restrained lap. The flashing yellow lights of the Nissan 350Z pace car round the final turn before the front straight, and it dives toward the bottom of the track. The pack stays tight as they near the start/finish line, then explodes forward like so many colored fireworks when the green flag is dropped. Vibrant and mottled flags snap in a stiff wind of fire and power, lapping at an average speed of just under 100 mph. Organizers place a slow chicane of stacked tires at the end of the brightly lit front straight to keep a handle on velocity and, presumably, to present the audience with some inevitable carnage. Flames lick the Inconel headers that exit just aft of the front tires as the Z, elegant as a brushstroke, slows for the chicane. One hundred and fifty mph is quickly dispatched as white and orange rotors burn through the haze of 1,000 mercury vapor suns.
The lead group remains bumper-to-bumper tight through slower corners, with the number one Xanavi Z, driven by Motoyama, in the lead. The second-place Supra hits the strobes going into the chicane, attempting to psyche out Motoyama. Rivalry makes for good press, close racing and the ever-profitable divisive fan split. NISMO's Z's have battled the high-revving TRD Supras all year, with the championship falling barely into Nissan's hands.
As the leading pack of cars stream past, the Z's 3.0-liter twin-turbo engine grunts in reply to right-foot orders, and barks with every flat-foot upshift. The Supra's V8, in contrast, sounds like a malformed kazoo. Ten laps in, 30 headsets in the NISMO pit crackle with the same bad news: three-car pileup in Turn Seven. The second-position Supra bumped and spun Motoyama's Z, landing it directly in the path of the fourth-place NSX. Back in the pits it's quickly decided that the damage is terminal. The car is lowered onto rollers by a host of mechanics and pushed out of the way. The machine is stoic, win or lose, and attention turns to the number 22 Motul Z. Those wowed by NASCAR pit cowboys will not be disappointed by the JGTC pit norikumiin (warrior). Helmets are donned, goggles slid into place, and the pit grows silent. The crew hops the wall when familiar HIDs bob down pit lane. The crack of the carbon/Kevlar splitter slamming into metal placard looses the crew on the car. The scene is more parlor trick than pit stop, slicks and drivers swapped with absurd rapidity.
The SCCA official monitoring the stop is just as unprepared for how fast the team dispatches a normally lengthy process. She's escorted aside by a crewmember as air jacks are retracted and fresh slicks chew into textured concrete, the Z howling back into the night.
Two hours after it began, the night reclaims its silence. The cars scattered in the garage post-race look like they've just finished a short track feature race. NISMO replaces every body panel on both Z's with new bits made of pre-impregnated carbon fiber, each one costing as much as a small German car. The team manager, Hitoshi Mizuki, describes the All-Star race best: "Very expensive evening."
The next morning a new winner is announced. The twin-turbo Epson NSX that crossed the line first did not complete the requisite number of pit stops in the time allotted. This gives the win, unofficially, to the G'zox 350Z. We corner Richard Lyons in the afternoon because, well, he speaks English. Affable, young and collected, NISMO and JGTC would be hard-pressed to find a better spokesman. Lyons had fun, but was disappointed that the high-downforce, high-grip potential of the cars was mitigated by a dusty, low-grip track surface and a preponderance of low-speed, bumpy corners.
GT500 cars generate up to 2.3 sustained g and peak as high as 3.0g on some courses in Japan. In this environment the Z's could only muster 1.9g. This sentiment is echoed by others who described the course as an unhappy compromise. Most are frustrated by their inability to show America the full dynamic potential of their cars.
The show is still impressive. We've been waiting for years to bathe in such mechanical bliss and, ignorant though we might be, remain damn impressed. Over the course of four days in the NISMO garage, what we initially perceive as contempt changes to indifference, then amiable acceptance. The NISMO mission statement reads, "Win," not "Be nice to journalists." And we learn, slowly, how to deal with the situation. Stay out of the way, respect the mission and be amazed by the precision. This is a well-oiled machine of victory and we are, understandably, grit.
