Ferrari
Maserati 400 at California Speedway
April
1-3, 2005
The third race in the 2005 Grand Am Rolex Series
was our first event on the West Coast at California Speedway in
Fontana. Our first impression of the raceway was not
positive. The Thursday test day was cancelled due to excessive
wind. The track is in a valley and wind coming from the mountains
blew debris all over the course and certainly would have made the cars
very nervous on the Speedway's banking.
This is a regular track on the Grand Am circuit
and many drivers are from Southern California, so this would be their
home track. We knew most of our competitors were familiar with the
track and the loss of the test day would hurt us.
Driver
Line-ups for the 14 and 94 Porsche GT3 Cups remained the same as at
Homestead. Cory Friedman and Leh Keen drove the 14 car, and Tom
Soriano and Bransen Patch piloted the 94 car. We also brought out
the #45 Grand Am Cup car, this time driven by Jay Brown and Anthony
Jernigan.
Neither of our GAC drivers were
familiar with the car or track, so it took a while to get up to
speed. Qualifying was essentially one flying lap, as a few crashes
severely shortened the session. Jay managed only 35th on the grid
of 71 cars on his only flyer, but his race pace was much stronger than
that. He gradually moved up in position and just before the 1:00
mark, was 17th overall. We did a stop about halfway through the
race and Anthony got in. Brown was bumped in the rear and the
cover came loose, so we used this opportunity to cut off the broken
piece without losing any time. Shortly after that we got the
second full-course caution of the race, and when it went green, we were
25th and a lap down from the overall leaders. The track was green
just briefly before another incident brought out another yellow, but it
was long enough for Jernigan to get beat around a bit during the overly aggressive
restart. The car seemed fine running under the yellow, but as soon
as the track went green, the engine tempt increased rapidly. The
front radiator had been punctured during one of the impacts and we were
forced to retire from the race.
We worked
with the 14 car, but was not able to make it into the top ten until
qualifying, where Cory put together a lap good enough for 9th on the
grid. A recent rule change by Grand Am slows all Porsche cars with
a weight penalty, and further hurting our chances was the allowance of
the BMW 3.4ltr engine derived from their World Challenge efforts.
While the Porsches were negligibly faster than the M3's at Homestead,
only the #26 car with Factory driver Patrick Long was able to even come
close to the pace of the top BMW's. We suspect the the BMW's are
still holding back to make sure they are able to keep the new engine for
the rest of the season.
The 94 car suffered
even worse problems, as it had a very unusual Ring and Pinion failure
that neither we nor Porsche Motorsports could explain. Being a
part that does not wear out, we didn't have a spare on hand.
Consequently the car missed the remainder of the practice sessions, but
was ready for a few laps in qualifying. Bransen did a great job considering
his lack of experience on the track and with the car, and he started
21st in GT.
Shortly after the race began,
our misfortune shifted to the 14 car. A DP blew turn 3 and smashed
into the Driver's side door. Due to the location of the impact,
Cory thought the damage would be worse than it was, so it took a while
to get the car back to pit lane to evaluate the damage. We pulled
the bent fenders off the tires and sent him back out. The steering
wheel was off-center, so the toe was certainly off, but the car was well
enough to continue. The car's pace wasn't bad, but we lost just
shy of 4 laps to the class leaders. The driver of the prototype
admitted fault on the SPEED coverage, but that was little consolation to
us.
The 94 car had a solid race
going. Helped by a wave-by, Patch was up to 7th in class and
running a good pace. A yellow at the 1:00 mark was a good
opportunity to re-fuel the 94 car, but since we took on fuel when
repairing the 14 car, we left him out. The 14 car stayed in 19th
position almost the entire race, slowly reeling in some of the lagging
GT cars. A yellow with a little more than an hour to go was a good
opportunity to get both cars in for fuel, tires and driver change.
Shortly after the stop, Tom was circulating 13th in class, but a small
off dropped him to 14th, where he would finish. With about 0:15
left in the event, a GT car broke and was unable to continue, so the 14
car picked up a spot, and just before the white flag came, Leh was able
to pass the Maserati for 17th position.
The
race-winning BMW had a full lap lead over the first Porsche, who was 2nd
in class. In the end we were about 6 laps down from the race
winner, so we likely would have been top 7 if not for the
incident. This knocked Cory and Leh from 3rd in GT points down to
6th, but the leaders are still in range. The next race on the
Grand Am schedule is at Laguna Seca later this month. Hopefully,
Grand Am will see the lack of parity in the class and will reconsider
allowing the BMW's to run with more power, less weight and wider tires. |
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