PRACTICE AND QUALIFYING

We had been struggling with handling issues at the first two rounds and were really looking forward to this round because there was a full test day on the Thursday prior to the race.

On Thursday morning when I was driving from the hotel to the track my rental car was rocking back and forth on the overpass because of the wind. When I got to the track I learned that all sessions had been postponed due to the Santa Ana winds. Apparently, this is not an unusual occurrence at California Speedway, but it was new to me. Eventually, the entire test day was cancelled as the winds kept up into the afternoon. This gave us a lot of free time to discuss the car with our engineer, which was nice, but not as good as actually testing.

We finally got started on Friday morning. We started off with an hour and twenty minute session. I went out first. We had started with a fairly soft setup, but still stiffer than what we had run at the previous round. The car was compliant, as expected, but not very responsive and we decided to go stiffer for the next session.

We had another hour Friday afternoon, and in spite of the increase in spring rate we continued to have the same problem. We were still way off the pace in terms of lap time, but the car was definitely better than it was in the morning session, so we decided to continue to increase the spring rate.

On Friday afternoon I was approached about driving a Porsche in the Grand Am Cup race. There was a practice session later that day where I would have a chance to drive the car for a few laps and see what we had. I did four or five laps at the end of the session. The car was owned by BGB Motorsports, but they had just recently purchased it and had left the set up as it was when they took delivery. It was probably more prone to oversteer than any car I have ever driven. It would have been great in a drifting competition. I t wasn't fast, but it was a lot of fun. We decided to change the spring package to what they were running on their other car for the race.

Our next session in the Rolex series car was Saturday morning. We went stiffer yet again and the car seemed to respond well. We were still only eleventh in GT, but I could sense that we were going in the right direction and I was confident we were going to have a good car for the race.

Qualifying was next, and Manuel did the honors as the starting driver. He managed a 1:45.0, which was a second quicker than he had gone in practice and was good enough for fifteenth. We had made a few changes to the car since the last time I drove it and Manuel was very pleased with the car.

On Saturday afternoon I found out that I wouldn't be driving the Grand Am Cup car in the race that day. Unfortunately, the funding situation changed and the team decided to park the car for the race.

We had one more shot at improving the GT car on Sunday morning in the warm up. The plan was for me to take it out and do some last minute fine tuning. We went out on old tires and the car was the best it had been, but we had a pretty big push in the banking. We took a lot of rear wing out of the car and it was much better. The car was more responsive with all the spring we had added, but we had lost some compliance. We made one more change prior to the race to try and keep the sliding to a minimum.

THE RACE

The race started at 1:00pm on Sunday. The weather was perfect. Manuel started the car and steadily moved up into the top ten. He was turning laps nearly identical to his qualifying time, so I knew we had improved the car. There was an early yellow flag, but it was too soon to stop, so Manuel stayed out. A second full course caution arrived just as Manuel was about to be passed by the overall leader. The yellow came just in time and Manuel hustled around to the back of the pack. We were on the lead lap and we were coming in for fuel, tires and a driver change.

By the time I got back on track the race was getting ready to go green. I was about half a lap behind, but after a few laps we got another caution period that bunched us back up. We were in great shape. Just as the field bunched up the crew called me and told me I needed to pit. Since I had new tires and a nearly full tank of fuel I was a little confused by these instructions.

Apparently, we had problems that I didn't know about. During his stint Manuel had noticed a change in the engine note and a slight loss of power. I thought the power felt a little down, but the car was working well and the lap times were okay so I wasn't too concerned. It seems that we had lost part of the exhaust system on the right rear. When I slowed down under yellow there was a little smoke in the cockpit. I came into the pits and the TPC crew went to work. Since more parts were needed they sent me back out to continue circulating under yellow.

By the time we had all the necessary parts at our pit the race was about to go green again. It didn't matter because the repairs took a while anyway. By the time I got back on track we were out of contention. Unfortunately, our problems still weren't finished. Something in the right rear got loose and tore up the inside sidewall on my right rear tire, so I had to pit again for a new tire.

Once back on course everything seemed normal until suddenly in the middle of the banking the Motec dash went blank and the engine shut down. There were a couple of other GT cars only a few car lengths behind me and I had very suddenly gone from 150 mph to zero throttle. Fortunately, I had just enough time to pull the car up off the line before they plowed into the back of our Porsche. As I was rolling into the infield I kept trying to get the car to fire back up, but it was to no avail. The explanation I got later was that with all the heat back in the right rear some things melted and the ECU shorted out. I spent another thirty minutes trying different things to get the car to run, but the result was the same. We were done after 47 laps, which turned out to be just over half the race.

We finished twenty-first out of about twenty-five GT cars, which puts us way back in the championship. Our next race is in a few weeks at Laguna Seca. Hopefully, getting away from the rovals will bring us a change in our luck.