Since I’m driving for the same team in both series (Franz Blam Racing), everyone was very understanding about my predicament. I flew into Toronto on Wednesday night and began testing for the Touring Car race on Thursday. At the same time out in California, my co-driver Justin Jackson was practicing and qualifying the Porsche GT3RS that we drive together under the J3 Racing banner. I found an Air Canada flight on Saturday night to transport myself and team manager Thomas Blam to California in time for the race on Sunday.

I didn’t think jumping right into the Porsche for the race would be too uncomfortable until I discovered that they had just completed a $50 million renovation to Sears Point, which included some changes to the track. Fortunately, the changes didn’t turn out to be too significant as they only really changed a couple of turns.

MOSPORT
It rained all morning on Thursday, which was lucky for us because the Team FBR Trans Sport Lexus IS300 that I was driving would barely run. Additionally, the team had finished building a second car and it seemed to be suffering from a similar problem. The engine would cut out at 6300 rpm and lose power. I did a few laps and then brought it in.

The team looked the car over pretty thoroughly and couldn’t find anything. The next session I switched cars with my teammate Mark MacLean so we could see if the cars were doing the same thing. For some reason Mark’s car ran fine, but mine still wouldn’t run. I did a number of laps in Mark’s car and gave the team some set-up feedback.

The crew determined that the only thing different about my car since the last test (when the car ran fine) was that we had changed spark plugs. Prior to the final session of the day, we switched the spark plugs on the two cars expecting my car to run and Mark’s to have problems. Inexplicably, both cars ran fine. Apparently, the IS300 is such a great car that it can fix itself.

On Friday we had two practice sessions. In the first session I did a 1:36.5 and we were tenth. The quick time in the session was a 1:36.0. We were very pleased with this, because at Sebring we were a lot further off the pace. The testing that we had done since Sebring had made the car a lot better. Mosport is not the kind of track where you can drive around a poor handling car with much success. If the car had been like it was at Sebring I think I would have been thirtieth on the time sheet.

In the second session we elected to stay with old tires and continue to work on the set-up. We made a number of changes to the car and on tires with fifty laps on them (almost two race distances) I was able to do a 1:36.8. The car was clearly better from our changes. Unfortunately, everyone else went quicker and we fell back to thirteenth.

Out in California Justin had driven the Porsche in the first ALMS practice and was eighth in GT.

On Saturday we had qualifying and the race. It was very cold on Saturday morning and as a result we missed the tire pressures pretty significantly for qualifying. I ended up with a 1:36.5, which put me fourteenth. The car was sliding around a lot more than it had been so it was hard to be very aggressive and still stay on the track. A Protégé driven by Scott Bradley was on pole with a 1:35.5.

The race was Saturday afternoon at 1:40pm. It was still very cold. I got a decent launch on the standing start and when I got to turn one there was a lane open on the outside. I got set up for a nice run through there when a few cars got together at the exit of the turn. I adjusted my line to the inside and got by a few cars. When I got to turn two, which turns back to the left, I was on the outside. As I crested the hill I spotted more mayhem as a couple cars were squirming around in the dirt on the outside of the turn. Nevertheless, I got a strong run down the hill, which set me up for the inside of turn three. By the end of the first lap I had moved up to ninth.

After only a couple of laps of green flag racing we saw our first full course caution. I wasn’t happy about this because I was at the back of the first nine cars, which had pretty much checked out, so I had nowhere to go but forward. During the yellow, Neal Sapp pitted for a tire and since he was in eighth I assumed that spot. The restart was uneventful and I held my position. After the restart I was getting held up, but couldn’t find a way by any of the cars in front of me.

There was another very long full course caution, which turned the race into a timed event. This was unfortunate because the car was really coming to me and I think a few more laps at the end of the race may have translated into a few more positions. Ultimately, we finished eighth, which was disappointing in terms of our finishing position, but we were encouraged by how far the car has come since the first race at Sebring. We have Lime Rock this next weekend and if we can get through that with a strong finish we have a month long break to continue to improve the car. Team FBR/Trans Sport is such a strong team that the development process for the car has been remarkably quick. I’m confident we will be at the front very soon. We need to get there before we fall too far back in the points chase – we currently sit sixth after two races. Incidentally, Ken Dobson edged out Will Turner for his first career World Challenge win.

SEARS POINT
Immediately after the race, Thomas Blam and I drove to the Toronto airport to board a flight to San Francisco. On the way, we found out that Justin was eighth in GT in the two practice sessions that day, but had qualified seventh that afternoon. His lap time was good and the drivers in front of him were all very quick so we were quite pleased with the result.

We got to the hotel about midnight and arrived at the track at seven the next morning. The morning warm-up wasn’t until 9:15am, but I wanted a chance to look at the new sections of the track that had been changed in the renovation project. As luck would have it, it was pouring rain during the warm-up and no rain tires were available. I went out to try and learn the revised track on some hand grooved intermediates. I stayed out for about four laps, but decided to come in when the car kept pitching sideways on the straights. It was actually kind of fun, but I didn’t want to be the idiot that crashed in morning warm-up.

The rain continued and it was pretty nasty at start time. It hadn’t rained since the track was resurfaced and the chemicals coming up off the track made the water look more like foam on the windshield. Justin had already been elected as starting driver. He got off to a nice start and held his position in the early going. Randy Pobst was having pretty severe handling problems in the wet and started to fall back fairly quickly. Justin got by him and also past David Murry, who was running with the leaders in the early going, but had to pit for repairs after getting tagged by Kevin Buckler in turn seven. The Siekel car, driven by Hugh Plumb, pitted early so after about an hour we had moved into fourth position.

Justin was doing a great job of dealing with the nasty conditions and later in his stint he was doing almost identical times to the GT class leaders. Nearing the halfway mark the track started to dry and all of the leaders started to pit and get slicks. The Racers Group car pitted first, followed by the two Alex Job cars. We stayed out in hopes that there would be a full course yellow, but in the meantime Justin was losing five or six seconds a lap while trying to drive a dry track on rain tires. Finally, we had to give up on the yellow ever coming and come in for the pit stop.

The J-3 crew had a quick stop, but I had a lot of trouble getting the car to fire back up and we probably lost thirty seconds in the pits as a result. When I finally got back on track I was on slicks and had to quickly find out where it was still wet and where it was dry. There were only a few wet spots to avoid. Otherwise, all the moisture was off line.

We were solidly in fourth at this point. A full course yellow finally came shortly after I got in and the first three GT cars were far enough ahead that the overall leader split us and we went a lap down. I drove around uneventfully in fourth for the next hour. The only drama came right at the end of the race. I was turning the last corner on to the front straight when the leaders came up behind me. The track renovations included building a wall around the drag strip on the front straight, which meant that the front straight of the road course was also walled in pretty tightly on both sides. As the leader approached it became clear that he was going left so I stayed all the way right and never really even tried to make turn one. The leader lunged for the finish line on my left and then all hell broke loose behind me. The second place car finished the race backwards in the wall and another car spun across the finish line. Luckily, no one hit me, but I also didn’t know if the leader had beaten me to the finish line, so I went back around the leader on the cool down lap and did an extra lap just in case. It turned out not to count so officially we lost by two laps, but it wasn’t really as bad as it looked.

There are a lot of things to be encouraged about. We had good success with the Pirelli tires as I ran on Justin’s qualifying tires, so by the end of the race they had an hour and forty-five minutes on them. I think this is a credit to our engineer Jim Bell and the feedback he got throughout the weekend from Justin. The new Pirelli’s are quick and we seem to be able to keep them on the car better than some of the other teams. I’m also excited about how quickly Justin has settled into GT racing. As the season wears on he’s just going to get better and it won’t be long before we visit the podium.

Sunday night after a few hours of sleep I headed for Lime Rock. We had a test scheduled for Tuesday for the upcoming World Challenge Touring Car race.