Mt. Tremblant is a great track in a great location. It was only my third time there, but I enjoy it more with each visit. Mt. Tremblant is a ski village up in the mountains, which also happens to have an amazing 2.65 mile road course.

One of the problems with going there in May is the weather. Two years ago it nearly snowed and this year the forecast was for rain throughout the weekend.

PRACTICE AND QUALIFYING

The event was Thursday through Saturday. We didn't go on track on Thursday until the afternoon, but then we ran almost constantly the rest of the day. I went out first and made a couple shock changes which seemed to help. When I ran out of ideas I came in and Manuel took over. We wanted to get him some seat time as it was his first visit to Mt Tremblant.

The fastest we went all day was a 1:43.0, which wasn't very quick. We were struggling with the same handling problem that plagued us at Laguna Seca. At turn-in the car wanted to swap ends. It was well balanced once it was in the corner, but at turn-in the car was very skittish. The good news was that in spite of this Manuel was very quickly getting up to speed at the new track.

On Friday morning we showed up with a plan. We finally found a shock change that fixed the turn-in problem, so once that was solved we went looking for more rear grip. Mt. Tremblant is not a course that rewards a loose car and the front of the Porsche was working quite well, so we made a series of shock and bar changes to the rear of the car intended to increase the grip in the rear. Several of the changes worked, but we lost the platform so we decided to make a spring change for the afternoon session.

The spring change worked great. I had done a 1:41.7 in the morning on new tires and I did a 1:41.8 in the afternoon on some well worn tires. In addition, the car felt much better and was very easy to drive. Manuel agreed.

Qualifying was next. Since it was a longer race we varied our normal strategy of Manuel qualifying and starting the race. I went out on new tires and low fuel as normal, but we had fuel pick up issues and the car stumbled on laps two and three before I figured it out and switched to reserve. My quick lap was a 1:40.7 on lap four, but I had big understeer. I stayed out trying several times to improve our position, but for some reason the tire pressures never came up. We started a couple pounds higher than normal for qualifying, but when I came into the pits they were very low. I still don't know what caused that, but we ended up qualifying a disappointing twelfth. The pole was a 1:39.5, and my teammates Spencer Pumpelly and Jean-Francois Dumoulin qualified second and fourth, respectively.

THE RACE

The race started at 11:00am on Saturday. The rain had stayed clear of us all weekend save for a few sprinkles, but it looked gloomy on Saturday morning. As always seems to happen, it didn't actually start raining until minutes before the race started. We could start our reconnaissance lap at 10:30am and we had to be on course no later than 10:50am. Everyone took their cars to the pit lane and waited until the last possible second to make the tire decision. We chose rain tires, which seemed pretty obvious at the time and I think every team on the pit lane made the same call.

The crew had applied FogX to the inside of my windshield and we turned the blower vent tube toward the inside of the windshield as well. Unfortunately, when the race started I couldn't see anything. The FogX didn't work and the blower vent was pointed up too high on the windshield to do me any good. There was a little tiny porthole in the bottom, middle part of the windshield that I could see out of if I ducked down really low in the seat and leaned to the right, but this gave me a very limited view. When I was behind another car and there was spray I couldn't even see their tail lights. After a few laps I had enough reference points on the sides of the track that I could get around without hitting anything, but it wasn't much fun.

On a brighter note, we had made a shock change to accommodate the weather and it had worked great. I had a tremendous amount of grip for the conditions and I really felt that if we could fix the visibility issue we would be very quick.

About forty-five minutes into the race I was rocketing down the back straight looking out the driver's side window at the trees when I saw a corner worker pull out a white flag. I'm not sure I would have seen it in those conditions if I was looking ahead, but that wasn't really an option. I decided that if there was a slow moving vehicle on course he would probably be on one side or the other so I moved to the middle of the track. It turned out to be a good guess. The #67 TRG Daytona Prototype was sideways on the left and my teammate Spencer Pumpelly was sideways on the right side of the track. The wreck had just happened as they hadn't even come to a stop yet. I shot through the center narrowly missing Spencer as I went by.

As it turned out, the driver of the #67 car thought he had a problem and was limping back to the pits very slowly on the racing line. Spencer crested the hill in fifth gear and hit him a ton. Both cars were out of the race.

It had taken me a while to assess the windshield situation, but during the caution period I figured out that if I could redirect the tube coming from the vent I might be able to create some visibility. Unfortunately, the tube was tie wrapped to the roll cage and the piece above the tie wrap was too short to redirect it where I wanted it.

I used to go racing a lot with Franz Blam, and whenever I would catch him beating a piece of metal to death with a hammer and I asked him what he was doing he would say: "I'm modifying it." I decided to modify the tube, which basically meant ripping the top off it so I could get it free from the tie wrap and then pointing it at the part of the window right in front of my face. Amazingly, this worked pretty well.

Once I could see, I could go a lot faster and actually started catching up to some of the lead GT cars. Our car was a lot of fun to drive in the wet. I could see the cars up ahead struggling for traction as they came off the corners. It seemed like I was catching them with a lot less effort.

Between the weather and all the yellow flags I went two hours and fifteen minutes on a tank of gas, which was difficult mostly because I had to go to the bathroom the whole time. When it finally came time to pit we had to do it under green. It was still raining and I told the crew not to change the rain tires, partly because I thought they were fine, but mainly so that Manuel wouldn't have to wait for the new ones to come up to temperature. The stop was quick and Manuel headed back out on track without delay.

Manuel is really very good in the rain, which is amazing because he is from Puerto Rico and doesn't have very much experience racing in the wet. I had given him a few tips about the track conditions over the radio, but the wet line is still something that you have to figure out on your own. I watched anxiously as Manuel's lap times continued to get quicker.

As his stint neared the one hour mark the weather conditions started to clear up. The rain had pretty much stopped and a few of the teams had come in for slicks. One of them was the #35 Porsche of my teammates Nick Longhi and Emil Assentato. Emil had gotten in during the last yellow and they had switched to slicks. I watched his lap times carefully so we would know when it was appropriate to make the change. He struggled at first in the wet conditions, but when his times started to drop we brought Manuel in for tires, fuel and a driver change.

It was our second stop under green, which was unfortunate, but we had to do it. I jumped in and headed out on course. The slicks were the right call and within a lap or two I was running fast times. The problem was that there were a lot of cars that were still out there on rain tires hoping to get a yellow so they could switch. They were all pretty slow and since there was only one dry line it was a little treacherous trying to pass them off line.

There was still two hours and forty-five minutes left in the race when I got back in so I would have to make one more stop. The weather was still unpredictable and there were occasional light rain showers, but nothing that really affected the track conditions.

I think I was in tenth or eleventh when I got back in. I pushed as hard as I could and the car really held up well. The fastest lap I did was a 1:41.0, which was about eight tenths off the quickest GT time, but it was the second quickest lap turned by a non-BMW and I could do it pretty consistently. It didn't seem to matter how many laps I put on the tires or how hard I pushed, I could still keep the same pace. We have been struggling with our setup all season, but I was very happy with where we ended up for the race.

With an hour and ten minutes remaining in the race there was a full course yellow. The crew radioed it to me in the last turn, but I stayed in the throttle as I came on to the front straight since there were no cars directly in front of me. As I passed under the double yellow flags at the start-finish line I saw the #66 TRG Daytona Prototype in back of me. I gave him a wave to let him know we were under yellow, but he drove by me on the front straight right in front of everyone. He was the overall leader, so I was pretty upset at the possibility of losing a lap. I yelled and screamed a lot at the crew and they reported the incident to the officials, but apparently no one saw it happen.

As we went through turn one the pace car was rolling out of the pit exit trying to get the #66 car to pull in behind him, but he kept going and I followed him. At the time I thought someone else must be leading the race and the pace car was trying to pick up someone in back of me. As it turned out, he just got there too late to get #66.

The officials sent the pace car through the cut in the middle of the track so he could take another shot at picking up the leader. We caught back up to him after the bridge on the straight leading up to the final turn. Amazingly, #66 drove right past him again and went directly into the pits. I pulled in behind the pace car because no one had yet notified me of the rule change that allows pace car passes.

When #66 pitted there was a new leader. I waited for my wave by and then pitted for two tires and fuel. Apparently, neither the pace car driver nor any corner workers saw the #66 car drive past the pace car. I am thinking about getting the team to paint our cars blue because it seems that the color blue renders a car invisible to race officials. The funny part is that #66 passed the pace car and then pitted. If he had stayed out and caught the field before pitting he would have had a lap lead on everybody. The moral of the story: if you pass the pace car and no one notices, don't dive into the pits! I wouldn't have thought this very useful advice, but it actually would have worked.

Since I had to wait for the wave by I was at the very back of the line on the restart. We had old tires on the right side of the car and new ones on the left. I didn't really know the circumstances at that point so I just went as fast as I could. As it turned out, the #22 PTG BMW of Joey Hand, Ian James and Chris Gleason was a lap up on the GT field and then there were five cars on the next lap including myself, so I was in sixth position.

With about half an hour remaining in the race I caught the #33 Maserati being driven by Joao Barbosa. The crew let me know it was for position. I pushed hard, but it was difficult to make a pass. The Maserati has a V8 and makes a lot of torque. The Porsche, of course, has excellent brakes and I would catch him in the brake zones, but he would get away from me off the slow corners. We were pretty evenly matched in the fast corners so I couldn't do really get up next to him anywhere. In half an hour of pretty heavy pressure Barbosa never really made a mistake big enough for me to capitalize on. I finished right on his rear bumper in sixth place.

The #22 BMW ended up winning the GT race and my teammates Dumoulin, Michael Levitas and Hugh Plumb finished fourth. Our next race is in a few weeks at Watkins Glen and it is another six hour event. I'm pretty excited about the direction we are going with the Porsche and I have a lot of ideas that might make it quicker for the next round.