ALMS - St Petersburg - Saturday Warm-up and Paddock notes

It’s another beautiful day here on the bay in St. Petersburg. Weather conditions for the race later this afternoon should be perfect. The ALMS teams got their last chance this morning to sample the track with a brief twenty-five minute warm-up session. All in all it was an uneventful practice. Scuffing tires and a getting both drivers one last run around the street circuit was the order for this morning. About half way through the session we had a short red flag period for debris on the track. No significant time was lost though as most teams used the break to change drivers.

In Prototype there were no real surprises. Herta again showed his familiarity with the circuit and the quickness of his Acura by staying at the top of the charts through most of the session. Herta’s time would fall to Alan McNish on the final lap of the warm-up. Obviously the damage to the #1 Audi from his off during qualifying was minor and easily repaired.

The Highcroft Acura was fifth quickest and had one satisfied team owner. Duncan Dayton, “The car is great. We didn’t get quite the run we wanted in qualifying but the guys were real happy with it this morning. It’s going to be a real dogfight and I think we’re going to be right in the middle of it. Our car has been really good on tires and I think that might work to our advantage. This is only our eight ALMS start. So we are still learning. We had a roll-bar bolt seize on us yesterday in practice. It was a great opportunity for our team to deal with challenge under race conditions. I have new found respect for all the team owners willing to do this. It a lot easier to sit back and be a critic. Honda expects excellence and our motto is to exceed their expectations. We have a tough challenge ahead of us but it is an exciting one. Andretti-Green and Fernandez have both won championships for Honda in the past. All we’ve done so far is finish one race. Yes I miss driving, but to do this job right it needs my full attention.”

The B-K Motorsports Mazda had fuel mapping issues yesterday that were causing the team quite a headache. They have solved those problems and very happy with the car’s performance during the warm-up. The mechanical throttle that was problematic at Sebring has been replaced with an electronic ‘drive by wire’ system. The team has scheduled some much needed testing time for after the Houston race.

We did have a reversal of roles in GT1. The #4 Corvette of Gavin and Beretta had led both previous practice sessions and qualifying over the #3 car. This morning Magnussen finally got the best of his Corvette rivals by posting a 1:09.9 time which was the best time so far by that car. Late in yesterday’s practice the team did a front spring change on the #3 car which may have contributed to their improvement.

Van Overbeek in the #45 Flying Lizard Porsche set the pace early in the GT2 class. The team made some changes to the setup overnight and it is now handling much better. The Rahal-Letterman Porsche was back out and up to speed with Kelleners at the wheel. The car showed no ill affects of yesterdays crash damage. Tom Milner Jr. explained the incident, “I was avoiding a car that was existing the pits and I went a little to wide and got into the marbles. I just got out where I shouldn’t have been and got into the wall. unfortunately we missed qualifying but the car feels good this morning.”

Mika Salo took the lead near the end of the session only to be nipped on the last lap by Henzler in the Tafel Porsche.

Some interesting comments were made this morning by John Love of Michelin Tires. This was somewhat of a enigma for the most prominent tire supplier to the series. It’s fairly unusual for them to enter a race meeting with the ALMS at a circuit where they have very little to no data. For instance, Michelin went into the race at Sebring with over 2000 miles completed and years of data while they only now have less than 200 miles completed at this track. But this particular race weekend presented another worry. It was not only a brand new circuit but it would be the first time that they would have to alternate track time with the Firestone brand of tires that the IRL run. The compatibility of the two tires was a complete unknown. Love was happy to report that there were no tire issues so far and that Michelin was impressed with how close the ALMS lap times were to the IRL cars.

Russell Wittenberg