Something akin to wet-sumping occurred when the AMA in the 1980s created a spec roadracing class for the Harley-Davidson 883 Sportster. Bikes braking for turns smoked, until the late Don Tilley figured out how to make sure the scavenge oil pump could keep up with the action. Commenting on having being summoned to Milwaukee to share his special knowledge, he said, “Engineers aren’t real comfortable talking with fellas like me, who don’t have a bunch of college degrees.”

The engineers shouldn’t feel bad. When Detroit decided getting involved in NASCAR could sell a lot of cars, they swallowed their pride and sent their corporate jets to fetch in top racing talent like the late Smokey Yunick. Degreed engineers had zero experience with racing, and intelligent men like Yunick and Tilley had both the necessary experience and solutions that worked. That’s usually the way things go; practical people are the first to tackle emerging problems, and only then do science and engineering work out the whys and wherefores, then put the new knowledge into the next editions of their textbooks.