Road America Friday Report

Muscle Milk, BMW, NGT and PR1

(Due to timing, schedules, and whatever else lame excuse I can come up with, the Friday report is a single, all inclusive ramble…)

What a way to shake off the rust.  I think I’m in heaven… Nah, it’s just Road America.

Personally it has been Long Beach since I was last at a race.  That’s seems like a long time ago…

I don’t get it #1 – Driving to the track, I saw a sign, near the town of Columbus Wisconsin, signifying that there was a Christopher Columbus Museum close by.  Really?  I’m assuming it is the explorer, not some dude named Chris.  Really?  In Wisconsin?

Keeping in that same thought, when I arrived at the track, the morning session had just been red flagged.  (The red was likely my fault)  A quick journey in the pits turned into an all day affair.  First up was Paul Gentilozzi, who was quite pleased to report that the 99 Jag was 6th fastest in the GT class for the session, sandwiched between two BMW’s.  Progress is being made by the Rocketsports team on the kitties and they appear to be making a racing car out of it.  But, as evident, by what happened in the afternoon session, when the No. 98 either puked or dumped on track (front engine car – puked), causing a red flag for the clean up, possibly with kitty litter.  After the fact, it was stated by the team that the problem was a wiring loom fire.

Paul did verify that the he expects to be back next season, as the team has a contract for 2012.  He also verified that Kenny Wilden will be with the team the rest of the season.  “He is a very fast and underrated driver.  He has been doing a good job for us.  I just feel bad he didn’t get a chance to do well at Mosport, his home track.”

As far as the improvements to the car, Paul gives credit to the team.  “The team has been working hard at getting the car reliable.  Now that we can keep the car on track, we can actually work with it and develop it.”

Autocon was the reason for an early red in the morning session, when Tony Burgess had an off, causing damage to the nose of the Lola.  According to Chris McMurry, the restrictor change has made a big difference.  “It’s much better out there now – we can actually pull out some distance on cars on the straights, but it’s nothing like what we had last season.  Last year we hit 195 here and this year we are down to 176.  That’s quite a change.  Last year, every shift would slam our head back into the head support – we’re not there now.  So far, I’m ok with where we are at, but then again we haven’t ran side by side with either the Aston or Dyson cars yet either.”

Speaking of speeds Dyson, Guy Smith said that this track is definitely favoring the larger displacement Aston.  “We’re like 6mph down on them and with our narrower P2 spec tires, we’re struggling to keep up, even trimmed out as much as we are.  We can piece together a couple laps near their times, but just not consistently.  We’re hoping that because this is a 4 hour race, we’ll get a chance somehow through strategy to keep up with Muscle Milk.”

For Muscle Milk, they’ve been heading the time sheets quite consistently here.  On Thursday, they did not aoppear on the time sheets, but according to Klaus Graf, they did get in a lap.  “It was time for an engine change, which we did, but we got called back in to check some things out.  We just never went back out.”  It was confirmed that Lucas Luhr will be racing in China the same weekend as the ALMS race at Baltimore.  The team will officially announce their replacement later next week.

Graf set the class and overall pole relatively easily, setting his time somewhat early, keeping a comfortable gap over Chris Dyson.   Late in the session Steven Kane put down a very strong time in his Dyson entry, eclipsing the time set by Chris to take second overall.  Graf - “We did some changes to the car that made it more uncomfortable to drive, but the changes made the car faster.”

Supposedly there was a meeting concerning the points mess from Mid Ohio here on site at lunch.  Thus far no outcome from the meeting or a resolution in the points issue has been resolved.  Both parties involved – Muscle Mild and Dyson are extremely frustrated with the situation.

This weekend Michelin has brought out their mid season updated tires for some of their GT class competitors.  For Porsche (Lizards), they have a new construction, while both Corvette and Ferrari entries will be able to utilize new compounds.  In qualifying it made no difference though, as again it was a BMW, this time Dirk Mueller, taking class pole.  It was close though, as Jan Magnussen in the 4 Corvette turned a lap only .006 seconds back.  In GT, the top 5 cars were within a second of each other, with oddly the No. 3 ‘vette missing the cut.

Dirk – “It’s a hell of a track, one of my favorites world-wide. Being European, its very Spa-like, but also a bit of Nordschleife which is the best track in the world in my opinion. The Dunlop tires are really working well here. I hope we can continue our success tomorrow. We've had a lot of luck and good performance over the last few years. Sometimes it's tough, you can’t win all the races, we won 3 in the beginning. We had some tough luck, we had the speed to win most of the races, but had that bad luck. We are still in the lead with the points. This is our 5th pole position in a row, which we weren't focusing on after our low point yesterday. We really struggled, but we pulled together as a team, both cars, and working hand-in-hand, which is funny ‘cause my co-driver is Joey Hand. We don't really talk, it’s amazing, we just know what the other person likes and needs. He knew I was qualifying but he was the one who set up the car, and it was really, really good.”

Both Mags and Toni Vilander were making last lap efforts to take pole but were balked.  For Risi, starting 3rd, splitting the Corvettes and the BMWs in qualifying for a 4-hour race is a good place to start.

For the Lizards, this season has been a humbling season.  Thy have had the pace, but just haven’t gotten the breaks in this ultra competitive class.  According to team strategist Thomas Blam, “it’s been frustrating stretch.  At least we’ve been there, we’ve had the speed.  We just haven’t been able to bring it home.  I guess it could be worse – we could be having similar results but never be in a position to challenge.  We could easily have a couple wins already, but it just wasn’t meant to be.  I guess coming down the stretch of the season it makes our job easier.  We’ve got no points positions to really worry about.  It’s now just a matter of going for it.”

By all appearances, the GT class race for Road America is shaping up to be quite a spectacular show.

In LMPC, pole went to the under-employed Butch Leitzinger, this time racing for PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports.  “It’s been a rough season – I haven’t been as busy as I’d hoped.  I’ve spent most of my time this season trying to dig up drives – I’ve got no plans at all for next season, but I do think I know what I’m doing for the rest of this season.  The team is quite good and I’m really enjoying my time in the car.  The chassis is quite good.  I’d spoken with Andy Wallace and Luis Diaz about the cars, as they’d driven them before.  They said they were very good, but I didn’t think it could be that good.”

Gunnar Jeannette qualified second in class, about .1 second back.  The last I’d spoken with Gunnar, he was quite vocal about the lack of speed differential between the various classes.  Thankfully he was much more up beat this time about the various class capabilities.  “They’ve given us some help and it is noticeable on the track.  The ultimate speed is about the same between us and the production based cars – we’re just able to get up to that speed much quicker.”

GTC saw Sean Edwards push the rapid NGT Porsche to top time in the class, just eclipsing the effort of Jeroen Bleekemolen in his Black Swan Porsche.  Sean - “it’s my first time here. We only had practice on the iRacing game. It's a lot like Spa Francorchamps. I'm really happy with the pole. I was not expecting that.”  As far as for the GTC cars, “we have a lot of power, we are running about the same speed in the straights as the GTs, but we really have to be hard on the brakes and they should be able to out-do us in the corners.”

Oh, there is a LMP2 class again, if you consider a 1 car entry a class.  For the record, Christophe Bouchut qualified the Level 5 Lola HPD to 5th overall.

I don’t get it #2 – just for this trip, I picked up a Frank Zappa CD.  Lumpy Gravy.  Ech.  It’s like 30 minutes of The Beatles Revolution 9.  What a waste…