PRACTICE

There was a test day on Thursday, followed by two official practice sessions on Friday, and qualifying and the race on Saturday. We started off the test day with a pretty loose car and finally determined that the older Hoosier tires we were running were causing the handling problems. We made a tire change in the middle of the last session and saw a big improvement in the handling.

For the Friday morning session we made a couple shock changes to try to improve the car in the fast transitions that are a signature of VIR. I only got a couple laps at the end of the session in heavy traffic, but it was enough to determine that the car was improving.

We missed the second session on Friday to work on the car. This left us with Saturday qualifying as the only session prior to the race. We were hoping for a dry qualifying session because Grand Am cancels qualifying when it rains and grids the field based on points. Since we did not receive any points at Daytona we would have to start in the back in such an event, and so of course it was wet for qualifying. Oddly, they held the session anyway and counted it as a practice session.

The race start was scheduled for 3:15pm on Saturday. The weather was such that there seemed to be some disagreement among the teams as to the type of tires to start the race on. There was a dry line on the track, but the weather was threatening. We chose to start on dry tires.

With almost ninety cars starting the race between the two classes it was inevitable that a lot of the race would be run under caution, but the questionable weather only made things worse. I think the first full course caution was flagged before the end of the first lap. Shortly after the restart there was another one and this pattern continued throughout the early part of the race.

At one point, during one of the caution periods, it started to rain pretty hard. Most of the teams had chosen to start the race on dry tires, so most teams came into the pits during the caution and switched to rains. We decided to leave my co-driver Tim Pappas out and hope it dried up. I'm not sure that Tim was too happy about this decision, since he had to drive the car under those circumstances, but we told him just to hang on and not worry if he got passed by a few cars.

After most of the field pitted for tires, we moved up into sixth place. There were a couple restarts where it was still raining pretty hard, but Tim did a great job, losing only one position. Eventually, it dried out and we were starting to look really smart.

Many more laps under caution followed. I was hoping that there would be an extended period of green flag racing in the dry, since we were one of the few cars that didn't have rain tires on our car. Unfortunately, we weren't so lucky. Eventually, the other GS cars began to pit and take dry tires, thereby negating our advantage.

We have been having problems all season keeping our engine cool. When it gets too hot we lose power, and because the computer causes us to run rich when the temperatures increase, we get lousy fuel mileage. When the other cars started to pit for their final stops, we stayed out because we were afraid that if too much of the race was run under green we wouldn't make it too the end. When we finally got near our fuel window, we pitted and I took over behind the wheel. Since we were one of the last cars to pit, we were near the back of the line for the restart.

When I took over the temperature was still within a reasonable range and on the restart we were making decent power. I think Tim had probably only driven eight to ten laps under green during the first half of the race, so the car had never really gotten that hot. There ended up being a little more green flag racing during the second half, although not a lot, and as the car heated up it slowed down. We eventually worked our way from the back to an eleventh place finish.

None of us was really too excited about finishing eleventh, but there are signs of hope. We made great strides with the handling and brakes, and if we can get the temperature issues under control in time for Laguna Seca, I think we will be in the mix.