BH Curse

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The BH Curse, also known as the Curse of BH, was a well-known superstition in ARWS circles. The "curse" was supposedly started by American Dan BH who drove in F1RWRS during 2010. Dan won one race in his career, the 2010 F1RWRS Saxon Grand Prix. He then disappeared off the face of the earth.

Following this victory, a string of American drivers came and went from the sport, some scoring podiums but none able to taste victory. The "curse" continued in earnest for eight years, until ARWS series rookie Dan Greenlaw saw victory in the 2018 ARWS Austrian Grand Prix and thus earnt his place in history as the breaker of the BH Curse.

Notable Examples

  • T. Hemo Goblin was the first American driver in the series after BH and he was the first to attempt to break the curse. Hemo Goblin nearly won the 2011 Belgian Grand Prix after a series of crashes brought Hemo Goblin to second. However, Hemo Goblin picked up a black and orange flag after hitting Giovanni Roda and did not challenge for the lead. It would be Hemo Goblin's best result of his career. He later decided to retire after his team Hemogoblin Autowerks collapsed in the middle of the 2012 F1RWRS season.
  • Nicolas Steele was the next American driver in the series. Despite early promise, Steele gained a reputation for being a menace on the road and was involved in several crashes, including a major accident at the 2011 New South Wales Grand Prix which caused him to be disqualified after the race was stopped. After that, Steele only qualified for four races in 2012, not taking a points finish until the 2013 Brazilian Grand Prix. Steele was also called out on his driving style and erratic behavior. Steele almost broke the curse in the 2014 F1RWRS season, finishing on the podium three times at Brazil, Monaco and the United States. However, Steele was also reprimanded by the F1RWRS Commission for causing an accident at the 2014 Tasman Grand Prix
  • Vidal Reyna-Sanchez a Spanish born driver with American citizenship, entered F1RWRS during the 2013 F1RWRS season as a replacement for Frank Zimmer at the Horizon Motorsport team. Vidal had one start in the series at Melrose Racing Team where he finished twelfth, but he failed to qualify the car ever again. Sanchez was dropped after Horizon merged with MRT at the close of 2013. However, Reyna-Sanchez did manage to win the Indy 500 in 2014.

A New Hope

With the incumbent Americans in F1RWRS unable to break the curse, attentions swiftly turned to cultivating the next generation of talent in the sport's newly established feeder series. Attention was initially drawn to Tanner Jason in F2RWRS, who finished on the podium thrice during 2014, and generally showed a good turn of pace. During the same year in F3RWRS, the ZombieKart team became a bastion of promoting emerging American talent, giving the young Shane Walsh and Dan Greenlaw their single seater debuts. The latter scored a podium on his mid-season debut. Initial success came from the newly founded Rejects of LFS series however, with Cave Johnson winning the championship title for Ultimate Racing.

2015 saw progress towards the higher echelons of racing stall significantly. Jason, along with fellow F2RWRS pilot Dave Anderson, struggled to make an impact, with the former failing to qualify for races during most of the season, and was eventually sacked for his erratic performances. Cave Johnson failed to capitalise on his title, staying put in RoLFS series and only managing 8th in the championship. However, further down the single seater ladder, there was much better news, as Dan Greenlaw took four race wins on his way to the 2015 F3RWRS title. Meanwhile in the new F1RDS championship, Californian driver Jerry de Boer took three wins in his debut single seater season, finishing runner up in the championship standings and earning a promotion to F3RWRS for the coming year.

Shane Walsh kept American promise strong in 2016 by finishing runner up in the same championship his compatriot Greenlaw had won the year before, F3RWRS. De Boer however failed to make the expected impact, only finishing in the Top 8 once all season, and found himself consigned to 22nd in the championship overall. Greenlaw also suffered a rocky start to his F2RWRS career; initially unable to score points and even failing to pre-qualify on occasion, he jumped between his regular Scuderia Alitalia team and their satellite outfits RonDen and Aeroracing in an attempt to find form. Eventually a win and three podiums came during the course of the year, but after such a strong showing in F3RWRS, many were worried his development was beginning to stall. Similarly, Cave Johnson's career was continuing to nosedive, as he managed only a handful of points finishes dispersed amongst a litany of failures to escape pre-qualifying in F2RWRS.

Worries about Greenlaw's development were unfounded though, as thanks to four wins and consistent finishes in the Top 5, he won the 2017 F2RWRS title, and earned a contract with the newly crowned ARWS Constructors Champions Voeckler Renault for the 2018 season. Shane Walsh also had a great debut season in the series, coming fourth overall and also earning an ARWS contract, albeit with the Gillet ENB team rather than an established frontrunner.

The Curse is lifted

Greenlaw was immediately on the pace during his initial foray into the highest level of racing, fighting tooth and nail for victory against fellow series rookie Terry Hawkin for victory at the 2018 season opener at Adelaide. When Hawkin spun out of the fight for the lead, it looked as if Greenlaw would smash the curse with a victory on his ARWS debut, but once again the ghost of Dan BH hung over the circuit, and fate cruelly intervened. His Voeckler-Renault suffered an engine failure while comfortably leading, handing victory instead to Phillippe Nicolas.

The curse continued to linger in the following months. Greenlaw demonstrated he had the pace to succeed, but circumstances often worked against him. A disaster in qualifying saw him start the following race at Bathurst from the final few rows of the grid and charge all the way up the podium, demonstrating once again he had the pace to take race victories. But when the ARWS circus moved to Europe, his Voeckler team's form dipped, the car unable to compete on level terms with the superior Fusions and MRTs. This, combined with woeful reliability meant he could muster only a single podium in the next six races. His former junior formulae stablemate Shane Walsh was faring even worse; the Gillet technical package was a complete disaster, and neither he nor veteran team-mate Aurelien Moll were able to come even close to escaping the dreaded Pre-Qualifying session. All eyes therefore were on Greenlaw to try and defeat the dreaded curse.

Conditions at the ninth round of the season at Austria suited Greenlaw's team. Pouring rain was a good equaliser for the chassis which struggled with aerodynamic downforce, but had decent mechanical grip and a solid engine. This, combined with a better strategy than his main rival during the race weekend, Alberto Cara, saw him score a dominant and calculated victory, and after eight years of trying by various different drivers, finally put an end to the BH Curse.

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