The event was held at Barber Motorsports Park. It was my first visit there and the facility is absolutely amazing. I was able to check out the motorcycle museum on Saturday night (there was a Texas Hold 'Em Poker Tournament for charity) - a must see attraction if you ever get to Birmingham.

PRACTICE AND QUALIFYING

The Thursday test day began in the morning and we got off to a rough start with some electrical gremlins. We had to push start the car and then I was only able to get in a few laps before it died on track. That afternoon the gremlins had all been worked out, but I got punted into the turn one gravel trap by an optimistic Daytona Prototype.

Official practice started on Friday morning. The car seemed a little nervous at first and we made some positive changes that settled down the rear end, but part way through the session while Manuel was driving, the Porsche began to understeer. I got back in at the end of the session and confirmed that the car had definitely picked up a big push. After the session we discovered that the rear anti-roll bar had broken, which was the obvious cause of the understeer. Unfortunately, all of these issues put us a little behind in finding our setup.

The SAMAX crew had everything worked out by the afternoon session and when we made some shock changes to the rear of the car that really helped the platform. We were ninth quickest in GT in the session, so we were getting closer, but still had some work to do.

On Saturday morning we started playing with the aerodynamics because even though we seemed to have improved the balance, the car still had a nervous feel to it and was very difficult to drive. I did a 1:32.7, but the fastest GT cars were in the low 1:30's so we were way off the pace.

Qualifying was that afternoon and the track conditions had changed since the morning. We were still making changes to the aero package to try and settle the car down. We took away some front down force because we had already taken the rear wing about as high as it could go. I thought that we had a much better car. When I saw a 1:32.4 on the dash I was really disappointed, but it turned out the track was a lot slower and the pole time was a low 1:31, so we had closed up the gap quite a bit and also made the car a lot easier to drive. I felt like the SAMAX crew was doing a terrific job of playing catch up and if we had another day to make up for all the practice we missed we would have been right on the pace.

THE RACE

The race was scheduled to start at noon on Sunday. Temperatures were in the nineties and there was the possibility that it would rain, as it had every afternoon that weekend. The conditions were very similar to what they had been the day before during the qualifying session and I should have left the car alone, but I couldn't resist the temptation to try and make another improvement. I took a little rear wing back out of the car and this was a mistake.

The race start was uneventful. I had qualified twelfth behind the four BMWs, two GTOs, a Corvette, and four other Porsches. There aren't a lot of good places to pass at Barber so the first part of the race was essentially a parade. I also noticed that my last minute change had made the rear of the car very nervous again. Most of the other GT cars were running their qualifying times and I was going slower. I still managed to hold my position, but it was a pretty boring race early on because I was by myself most of the time.

Due to the number of cautions none of the front running GT cars got lapped in the first hour so we were still on the lead lap when the third full course caution came around the one hour mark. I pitted for fuel, tires and a driver change and Manuel took over. The pit stop was very quick.

We were on a two stop strategy in anticipation of all the yellows, so I was going to get back in at the first caution period that would allow us to make it to the end. Manuel was running a good pace. I had made a sway bar adjustment right before I pitted and Manuel played with that some more until he found the balance of the car. Unfortunately, as the Daytona Prototypes started lapping the GT cars a caution hit us at the wrong time. Manuel was further back in the GT running order than he would have been because of our early pit stop so he ended up getting split by the overall leaders and we went a lap down to the lead GT cars. When it all shook out there were four GT cars that went a lap up and we were in the second pack in eleventh position.

The caution took a while and we decided that we should try to pit and stretch the fuel to the end. We tried to call Manuel into the pits, but something had knocked out his ear piece so he couldn't hear us. We finally flagged him down near the end of the caution. He came in and we took tires, fuel, and I got back in. We had to serve a penalty because Manuel drove through the pit stall immediately behind us. We had gotten permission from the pit lane official to do that, but apparently he changed his mind and decided to assess a penalty.

By the time I got back on course the race was about to go green again. I made it to the chicane on the back straight before the crew let me know that the race had restarted. I was going as quickly as I could to try and make up ground when I got to the corner near the pit entrance. I got hard on the brakes coming up the hill as usual when the car snapped sideways. It was really violent, but I thought that I had just overcooked the entry to the corner a little bit. I saved it and went immediately back to throttle. In this section we were normally a little down on the revs so I just thought the car wasn't responding because I had gotten too sideways and scrubbed off too much speed. As I came down the hill, foot to the floor, the guys in the pits said that they could see parts flying off the car. When I got on to the front straight and the car still wasn't responding to my attempts at acceleration I finally figured out that we had a problem. We had broken an axle.

I managed to get the Porsche off course on the inside of turn one. I got a flat tow back to the pits and that was the end of the weekend. It was unfortunate because we probably could have moved up a few more positions although anything higher than fifth was out of the question after we went down a lap.

In spite of the disappointing result, I was really impressed with the team that Peter Baron has put together in such a short time. I hope that I get to work with them again soon.