UW News

June 3, 2004

On the road again: Technical communication’s senior computer manager likes life in the fast lane

What do a violin and a race car have in common?

For most people, absolutely nothing, admits Paul Nortrom, senior computer manager in the College of Engineering’s Department of Technical Communication. But in his case, the musical instrument helped build a passion that has him on the racetrack every chance he gets, screaming down the straightaway in a revved-up Honda Civic at more than 125 mph.

The relationship isn’t as unlikely as it seems. Upon close examination, the steps involved are as logical as those in the computer programs Nortrom works with every day. They ran something like this:


  • His mother signed him up to take violin.
  • The 8-year-old noticed that the teacher’s husband had a go-kart in the garage, buried under a pile of do-it-yourselfer detritus.
  • Young Nortrom befriended the husband.
  • The negotiating began.

“The deal was that I would try to improve my violin playing if they would sell me the go-kart,” Nortrom recalled. “I’d seen those things go before, and I knew they were pretty darn quick.”

He earned the cash with a paper route and made satisfactory musical progress. So that summer — and a number of summers thereafter — the Nortroms’ neighbors in the rural outskirts of Plymouth, Wisc., endured the high-pitched whine of the mini speedster’s lawnmower engine as it raced back and forth along the quarter-mile driveway that connected Nortrom’s home to the public thoroughfare.

“We’d start at 8 or 9 in the morning, and go until dark,” Nortrom said. “That was my introduction to driving,”

Many things have changed since then; some things haven’t.

Nortrom, now 30, still likes to tool around in a quick car. But instead of the driveway, it’s at places like Pacific Raceways in Kent, where he raced in the Solo 1 class over the Memorial Day weekend. And his latest machine, a 1995 Honda Civic, is a bit of an upgrade from his first set of wheels.

It has aerodynamics in the form of a spoiler and sports a beefed-up suspension that hugs the ground.

The bars of a full roll cage line the interior, and netting covers the windows.

A fire-suppression system and upgraded brakes provide peace of mind.

And a new motor — a 1997 Integra Type R, balanced and blueprinted with high-performance dual cams and a few other tweaks — keeps things exciting with about 207 horses, nearly twice the power the stock motor provided.

“It gets up and goes,” Nortrom said.

That was evident on a recent Monday, when Nortrom went to Pacific Raceways for a “track day,” a chance to practice driving around the course and get tips from professional racing teachers.

Strapped into his Honda — bright red with No. 87 neatly painted on the side, looking, as Nortrom himself describes it, like “a red roller skate” — the computer techie deftly navigated the turns, opening the throttle on the straightaway to roar past the advertisement-plastered grandstands at a loud 125 mph.

Twice, cars in front of him lost control and spun out. The first one, a comfortable distance ahead of him, was on turn No. 8. The second was right in front of him, on turn No. 5, a tricky passage that track officials dub the least forgiving on the course, having claimed more than

$1 million in damaged automobiles last year.

“That makes for a tense, exciting situation,” Nortrom said during a break. “I just focused on what I was doing, on being sure I got around the car and got out of the way so I didn’t get hit by the guy behind me.”

Speculating on the attraction of a sport that involves an element of danger, Nortrom says he thinks it started very early, even before the go-kart incident. He suspects his father ignited the initial spark.

The elder Nortrom was a sports car buff who owned a Porsche 356. He didn’t race, but he belonged to the region’s Porsche club and attended the group’s races as time allowed. He also occasionally took his son to the races at nearby Road America and wasn’t shy about sharing his enthusiasm.

“You know how fathers can be when they talk about things they did or saw when they were young,” Nortrom said. “ My father would tell me stories about past races with such graphic detail that I couldn’t help but develop some sort of bug for racing.”

When he was a little older, Nortrom and his buddies would often spend their Fridays and Saturday’s peddling programs at the racetrack in return for free Sunday admission to watch the races.

That fertile ground provided motivation to pursue the go-kart, his first hands-on racing experience. And although he suspects he may have disappointed his mother at the time, it all worked out for the best.

“I think my mom had aspirations that I would be a concert violinist,” Nortrom said. “I played first chair at a few youth symphonies, and that’s about as far as it went. But I did get that go-kart out of it.”

Later on that recent Monday, teachers with the racing school sponsoring the track day took the drivers on the course to walk the corners, describing what to watch out for and how to best accommodate the peculiarities of each section. They spoke of a corner’s camber, timing one’s apogee, of trail-braking and throttle steer.

Paying attention to the details helps a driver control the car, rather than vice-versa.

That’s where the real attraction lies, Nortrom said.

“I think for me, it’s the sensation of being focused solely on one task, in this case an essential one, which is navigating around the track as fast as I possibly can,” he said. “That’s why I do it. It’s almost a sort of meditation.

“That, and I like to go fast.”