Mike Fitzgerald



The Fitzgerald Chronicles: Puerto Rico Three Hour Enduro

12/13/2000 -

Last weekend my friend Dr. Matos, invited me to Puerto Rico to race his BMW M3 in the Three Hours of Puerto Rico. I brought my wife Jennifer and we stayed at a nice hotel on the beach in San Juan. Dr. Matos and his family were terrific hosts and we had a great time.

The Puerto Rican people are very enthusiastic about racing and I left with the impression that everyone on the island gets Speedvision. I was surprised to discover that I wasn’t the only driver from the States. BMW veteran Ray Korman and 2000 Trans-Am Champion Brian Simo both made it down for the event. We all received a very enthusiastic welcome from the other racers and the many fans. While I was there I learned that the island of Puerto Rico has more cars than people – my kind of place.

The track was a 1.3-mile road course located on the south side of the island in a town called Salinas. There were three turns and two chicanes; however, the two chicanes could be taken flat out. Two of the three turns were hairpins (although one was fairly fast) and the other was a right-left combination that required the car to work well in transition. From a driving standpoint, there were only the three turns to figure out, so getting the car to handle well everywhere was of utmost importance. The Matos Racing Team was terrific in this regard as they were very enthusiastic about making changes to the car to try and make it better.

The Three Hours of Puerto Rico was the season finale of the Puerto Rican professional series. Dr. Matos was second in the Pro-Touring 1 class driver’s championship by a small margin going into the race. There were three classes running together in the event: a GT class dominated by Trans-Am cars, the Pro-Touring class that included several other BMW’s, a Mustang and some Porsches, and a showroom stock class with a variety of entries. First place overall provided a $20,000 purse, although all the Trans-Am cars would have to break for us to win overall.

Our BMW M3 was basically stock with the exception of the brakes, shocks, fuel cell and the standard safety-related modifications. It was a 1995 E36 chassis and we ran D.O.T. approved shaved Hoosier street tires (spec tire for the Motorola Cup series last year).

PRACTICE AND QUALIFYING

We began practice on Friday afternoon. We had three sessions scheduled that day, however, I soon learned that they had a little different concept of scheduling on the island. Everything seemed to run a little behind, but you always had to be ready since you never knew when it might be time to go out.

The track was very bumpy and the car was quite stiff, so we immediately started making changes to make the car more compliant. We went quicker in each session so the team was pleased with the progress we were making.

On Saturday, we had two practice sessions, followed by qualifying. In the first session we both went quicker than Dr. Matos’s track record, unfortunately near the end of the session Dr. Matos heard a miss in the engine and brought the car in early. It turned out we had a bent valve. Unfortunately, we had to change the engine, which meant we would miss qualifying and have to start at the back of the field.

THE RACE

The Fitzgerald Chronicles - The Puerto Rican Edition

The team was up late on Saturday replacing our engine with the one from Dr. Matos’s streetcar. In spite of this, they were very enthusiastic and excited on Sunday morning.

A morning warm-up was scheduled but it was rained out, which was doubly unfortunate for us since we had a new engine to try out as well as some additional set-up changes.

We were on a two-stop strategy for the race. The plan was for me to start and finish, and for Dr. Matos to take the middle stint. The rules required that he complete a minimum of one-third of the laps run by the car to score points.

There were a couple of reconnaissance laps just prior to the race, which was fortunate because the car was cutting out at just above six thousand rpm. The crew quickly changed the computer prior to the race, which fixed the problem. There wasn’t time to get heat in the tires so I couldn’t tell much about the set-up changes we had made.

The race was scheduled to start at 1:00pm, but instead started at about 2:25pm. I got a good start and passed four or five cars before we got to the starter’s stand. Two full course yellows came out within the first fifteen minutes, which was very beneficial to us because it enabled me to move up through the field without losing much time to the leaders. The first stint was uneventful, except for the fact that we were using more fuel than we expected, which meant we were going to have to switch to a three-stop strategy. I had moved into the lead, but fell back to second when the car started to stumble as it ran low on fuel. The car was handling great, which was a relief to me since we had made some big changes in the set-up prior to the race and had no chance to test them.

Dr. Matos ran the car back into the lead, and by the time his stint was complete we were almost a full lap ahead of the rest of our class.

During the next pit stop I got back in, however, the driver change was a slight disaster. The team executed a very fast pit stop and I had to take off before I was really all the way situated in the car. The seat was stuck all the way back so I could barely reach the shifter, the belts were loose and the radio cord was looped underneath my shoulder harness so I couldn’t move my head or it would unplug the radio. I spent the next several laps (all under green) trying to fix some of this, but eventually I just gave up and drove.

In spite of the lack of comfort, my stint went well and I was able to increase our lead. The car would make about fifty to fifty-two laps on fuel, and our newly adopted three-stop plan was to go until it stumbled or we got a full course yellow. At that point we were going to put Dr. Matos back in so he would be sure to complete the required number of laps.

Things changed slightly at about lap thirty. I had just exited one of the chicanes flat out in fourth gear and was turning to the left when I felt a big thump in the right rear of the car and was suddenly sideways at 90 mph. I thought my right rear had gone flat and I immediately radioed that I was coming in. There were no more left-hand turns prior to the pit entrance so I couldn’t lean on the tire to test my theory – I just pitted.

The crew checked the tires and they were all fine. Dr. Matos got back in and I immediately started looking under the car for a broken axle or some other explanation for what had occurred. After a few laps, Dr. Matos radioed in that the car felt perfect. Unfortunately, I felt like an idiot.

Luckily, we were able to make it to the end without any more stops so we didn’t actually lose any time by pitting early, but I was still baffled by what had occurred. Dr. Matos drove a solid final stint to bring us home in first. We won by at least a lap, possibly more, although I never saw the final results. As a result of the win, Dr. Matos finished as the 2000 Pro Touring 1 Driver’s Champion.

There was a little bit of post-race drama in impound. It turned out that I finally got my explanation for the imaginary flat tire. A sixty-pound lead weight had fallen through the floorboard of the car (leaving a rather large hole) and I had run over it with my right rear tire. One of the corner workers brought it back after the race and said it almost hit the car behind me. The missing weight almost cost us the race as we made minimum weight by only a few pounds.

The Matos Racing Team was rightfully excited about the win and the championship. I was very impressed with their level of professionalism and enthusiasm. I was also very impressed with the driving talent of Dr. Matos. We tested together last January at Daytona where he showed a lot of promise, but since then he has improved and is really very fast. The whole experience was terrific. Hopefully, I’ll get invited back again next year!