In the Grand Am Cup event on Saturday I drove the #83 Porsche 997 for BGB Motorsports with my co-driver Jim Bosler. That race was scheduled as a two and a half hour event.

I've traditionally had pretty good luck at Watkins Glen. I won the six hour race in 2000 and finished on the podium last year in my only other start. Unfortunately, this year would not go as smoothly.

PRACTICE

We had three sessions in each car on Thursday during the officially sanctioned test day. The TPC Porsche was sliding around quite a bit, which I attributed to the incredibly old tires we were practicing on. It also seemed to understeer too much; a desirable characteristic at Mt. Tremblant, but not nearly as helpful at Watkins Glen.

In the BGB Porsche the idea was to get Jim as much track time as possible, as he had never been to Watkins Glen. I got in for one or two laps at the end of each session and then tried to give some feedback on the car. We made a few changes based on my limited feedback, and for the most part the car seemed to improve.

Official practice started on Friday morning. We still had a lot of understeer in the TPC Porsche and we were way off the pace. Things got worse in the afternoon session when Manuel got off course heading down into the boot (turn six) and met up with one of the ever present guard rails. It was a pretty hard hit to the left side of the car that bent the tub and broke a lot of suspension pieces. He was on some pretty old tires at the time and I can't help but wonder if that didn't contribute to the accident.

In the BGB Porsche I again drove a lap or two at the end of session one, but the second practice session was cancelled before I could get in. There was heavy rain accompanied by lightning that looked to me to be pretty close to turn one. Since there are a lot of metal poles in the pits nobody objected too strongly to the cancellation.

Saturday we had a practice session and qualifying for both cars, and then the Grand Am Cup race. The TPC Porsche was a handful after the accident. It wanted to turn left on the straights as well as under braking. I drove two laps in the car and then brought it into the pits. The Porsche was bent to the point that we gave up on trying to get rid of the understeer and started focusing on getting the car to go in a straight line.

Things were better in the BGB Porsche. I drove it for about six laps and actually got one lap without much traffic. It was a 2:07.3, which was a little more than a second off the fastest time, but I knew the car had a lot more in it, so I was feeling pretty good heading into the race. I was also encouraged because Jim's lap times were dropping every session as he became more familiar with Watkins Glen.

Jim qualified the BGB Porsche, as it was our intention to have him start the car. He did a nice job; however, he spun on his first flier, which shook him up a little bit. He had done quicker laps in practice, so I think without the spin he would have turned in a quicker time.

It was my turn next to qualify the TPC Porsche. I had taken to calling it "the crab" because while the wheels seemed to be pointed down the straight, the chassis clearly wasn't. The only way to get the car right is to take it to a body shop and straighten it out, which will hopefully happen before the next race. We qualified nineteenth.

THE RACES

The Grand Am Cup race started at 2:00pm on Saturday. It was scheduled as a two and a half hour race. Jim started the Porsche as we had planned. He did a great job and kept the car on the lead lap, which gave me a lot of hope for a good result.

There were three full course caution periods during the hour he was driving. We pitted on the third one and I got in. We had waited for a wave by before pitting, so when I finally got back out on course we were very near the tail end of the seventy-one car field. This meant that I had to navigate my way through most of the ST class before I even saw very many GS cars.

After a couple laps under green we got another full course yellow, which was probably good for us because by that time I had made my way past the ST cars and up to the rear of the GS class. The yellow served to bunch us all up and give me a fresh start.

Unfortunately, this pattern continued for the rest of the hour and a half remaining in the race. We would race for a couple laps and then drive around under yellow for a while. The restarts were very difficult in the Porsche because we are so far down on displacement to the other GS cars that we have relatively little torque. The Porsche 997 also has a very short second gear, which is barely usable.

In spite of all this we had moved up close to fifteenth after a few of these two lap sprint races and were getting within reach of a decent result. There was another full course yellow that finally ended with about five or ten minutes left in the race. The cause was six cars in the turn eight gravel trap, apparently victims of a blown motor and the resulting on track oil slick.

My restart was good as I was getting used to the limitations of the Porsche in that situation. As we approached the inner loop that followed the track's longest straightaway I had a good gap over the cars in back of me. I proceeded through the carousel on the tails of a dozen or so GS cars, most of which had fanned out across the track at that point. The log jam caused most everyone to check up a little with the exception of the guy behind me. Seemingly, he saw an opportunity to make up the distance he had lost on the restart and he came through the carousel leaving no margin for error.

As I exited the turn under full power and very near the limit of adhesion for the rear tires I took a huge impact in the right rear corner from the Mustang that was behind me. The hit spun me around backward. He then hit me again very hard in the right front partially driving over the right front corner of the car. We slid together off course, eventually coming to rest with his car sandwiched between my Porsche and the guard rail.

For me the final impact wasn't that big, in fact, it probably wasn't as bad as the hit that spun me in the first place, but since he got squeezed into the barrier he took the brunt of it. They took me to the track medical center and quickly cleared me. The driver of the Mustang was air lifted by helicopter to the hospital because of a possible concussion and heat exhaustion. I heard later that he was all right.

At the time of the incident I didn't even know who had hit me from behind, but my team saw the replay on tape and told me that it was the Mustang. Apparently, the crew from the Mustang team had come looking for me because they were upset that I had caused an accident involving their car. Everyone has their own perspective, but some people live in an alternate reality.

It was an unfortunate ending to an otherwise pretty successful effort. BGB Motorsports is a very professional outfit, and they gave me a car that was good enough to go through a good portion of the field in only a few laps of green flag racing, so I hope I get the opportunity to try it again with them.

There wasn't much left to do but look toward the race on Sunday. The six hour race started at 10:00am. The weather looked threatening so we spent a good portion of the morning getting ready for a wet race. The rain stayed away for the start, however, and things went fairly smoothly at first. I got by some cars in turn one on the start by taking the low line down near the grass and then managed to avoid an incident in the esses. After a few laps we were up to about twelfth position.

There were more positions to be had just up the road, but we just didn't have the car to do it. I continued on in the same spot for about half an hour or so when I encountered a problem that I had never had before. The cooler that holds the ice for our cool suits started working its way lose from its position in the passenger seat. The next thing I knew the lid was flying all over the car bouncing off the windshield, the gear shift lever, me, and everything else in the car. I was happy to be wearing a helmet.

I figured that eventually all the water and ice would empty out and I could throw the cooler lid out the window if I had to, so I just resolved to keep going. As I approached the downhill braking zone that designates the entry to the boot I hit the brakes hard and the cooler dumped over. Ice flew all around the car and water poured out all over the floor. I spun, although I wasn't really sure why at first. I got the car pointed in the right direction and kept going, but two turns later when I got on the brakes again the car went straight. At this point I headed for the pits thinking I had a flat right rear tire.

I told the crew to strap down the cooler, change the right rear, and then let me know what was wrong with the tire. I thought maybe we had a blow out due to excessive wear caused by "the crab" going sideways down the straights. Once I got back on track we were a couple laps down and the crew called over the radio and told me that the tire was fine. I guess that the huge quantities of water dumping out of the cooler were pouring on to ground in front of the right rear tire while I was braking causing the same loss of traction you would get if you drove flat out on slicks in the rain.

When the next full course yellow arrived we were far enough into the race to warrant fuel, tires, and a driver change, so we pitted and Manuel took over. I went off to search for food, and when I returned I had only been sitting in the pits for a few minutes when Manuel showed up in the pit box. I frantically started throwing on my gear and jumped in the car as quickly as possible since the track was green at the time. Apparently, Manuel had been on the radio saying that he was going to come in, but since our radios rarely work, no one knew that.

Shortly after resuming the race, I was heading into the toe of the boot when I hit the brakes in the normal spot. As soon as I pressed the pedal I knew the car wasn't going to stop and I threw it into a spin to get the speed off. Amazingly, I scrubbed off enough speed with the spin to keep the car from hitting the tire barrier after I left the track. I made it back to the pits again for a new left front rotor. The old left front rotor was destroyed when Manuel wrecked on Friday, so the replacement had failed.

After some more activity in the pits I left with another left front rotor and a seventeen lap deficit to the GT leaders. I drove without incident for an hour and a half or so before pitting again and handing over to Manuel.

My teammates in the #35 and #36 cars had gone out of the race early, so we had two cars remaining. Not long after Manuel took over it started to rain. Everyone was trying to decide whether or not to switch to rain tires when we heard that there was an incident on course. We were going to bring in both the #37 car and the #38 car under the caution. Unfortunately, the cause of the caution was a collision between our two cars! Manuel was trying to navigate his way around in the wet on slicks when he spun exiting the inner loop. Shortly thereafter, John Littlechild was exiting the inner loop in #37, also on slicks, when he collected Manuel. The impact was enough to knock both cars out of the race in what was a fitting end to our weekend.

The whole weekend turned out to be a disaster, as racing can sometimes be. Hopefully, we will have a different experience when we head to Daytona in two weeks.