6
Heures du Circuit Mont Tremblant
May 21, 2005
Mont Tremblant is the first race since
Daytona where using more than two drivers is practical. For this
race, we entered only the #14 car and Bransen joined Cory and Leh for
the first time this season. We have done very well with the longer
events, so we were hoping to improve our position in the overall
standings.
We had problems early on
when the engagement teeth literally broke off of 2nd gear, rendering it
inoperable. We lost most of the Test Day changing the gearbox, so
we were a bit behind on set-up and seat time all weekend. We had
things pretty well sorted by race time, just in time for the lovely
weather we had all weekend to turn into torrential rain. This
Canadian track is pretty tight and very tricky with fast blind turns, so
in a 6-hour race with these conditions attrition was sure to be a
factor. Cory was starting the race and has plenty of rain
experience, so we were still optimistic that the attrition would work in
our favor.
Friedman took the green
flag 33rd overall and 14th in class and
immediately started tearing past the other GT cars in the rain. Less than 15 minutes into the race, Cory had worked into 9th position, and the first of many cautions came out. We expected yellows to be frequent this race, so we did not add
fuel during the caution. Visibility
was not great, but it was holding up during the slow yellow laps. We had some tear-offs put on the windshield early in the weekend
expecting them to be helpful during the long race. Unfortunately, though, they were more of a hindrance than a
benefit because they became separated and water got in between the
layers. Still, making a stop
would have put Cory back behind and needing to overtake slower cars
again. Rear visibility was
essentially non-existent, so any pass was risky. As long as visibility did not get worse, we wanted to keep him
out.
When the track went
back green, Cory was in 7th position in GT. Unfortunately, the front windshield immediately fogged at speed,
and we had no choice but to bring him in to clean it up. This did not hurt us hardly at all, though. The pace in the heavy rain was slow enough that we were able to
get him in, clean the windows and send him back out in the back of the
pack. It was no worse than
it would have been had we stopped under yellow. We fell back to 16th briefly, but Friedman charged
back up through the pack into 10th place, only about 30
seconds off the class leader a quarter of the way through the race. He continued setting faster laps on par with the leaders, and by
the 2:15 mark, we were running strongly 3rd in GT and 14th overall. The track stayed
green for a surprisingly long time, so we had to make a stop for fuel. Track conditions were a bit better than they had been, but rains
were still required. We
re-fuelled the car, put Leh in and sent him out 8th in class,
still on the lead lap.
A caution came out
shortly after our stop, but rains were still needed, so we stayed out. This bunched the field back up and when we restarted, Keen was 5th in GT only 23 seconds behind the leader. At the halfway mark in the race, the front straight looked nearly
dry, but Leh reported the backside of the track still had rain. Dry tires were standing by, and we closely monitored lap times to
determine when to make the change. Leh
trailed the 4th place car by 10 seconds, and lap times were
plummeting.
Nearly simultaneously,
one of the cars ahead of us came in for dry tires and the other two
cars, Davis in the #73 and Lally in #65, were forced to come in by the
race officials. Grand Am
rules state that a driver can drive for only 3 hours straight, then take
a 1-hour break before driving again. Both teams used this opportunity to change to dry tires, so while
we were still on wets, we inherited the GT class lead. These cars returned to racing with lap times 10 seconds faster
than Leh’s, so it was obvious that a change was needed.
We added fuel and took
of the completely destroyed rain tires, and Keen remained in the car. We dropped to 4th place during the stop, but trailed 3rd by only 29 seconds and the 1st place car by only 1 minute. This is where we stayed until the 4-hour mark rolled around. A yellow came out when Bill Auberlen’s BMW had a horrendous
crash, leaving the driver unconscious. We added fuel and oil during the stop, and Leh maintained 4th position when it went green again.
With only 1:30 to go in
the race, track conditions were essentially dry. We survived the poor conditions only to have issues when it was
nice. Leh got pushed off the
course by a DP, and the very next lap, he got hit by another DP who
locked up and slid into him. The
pair of incidents left Keen just behind the 6th place car,
but a full lap ahead of the 8th place car. A yellow grouped the GT field back up with the top 2 cars way
ahead of the rest, but 3rd was only 4 seconds ahead of us in
6th.
More than the last hour
of the race ran under a green flag, and that in combination with the
3-hour driving rule, forced an unnecessary pit stop that pushed us back
into 8th position. Bransen
drove the final stint of the race under a light rain. We then had another run-in with a DP, this time it sent our #14
car through 2 gravel traps and nearly into a tire wall. The good news was the car could continue, but the bad news was
that we lost yet another position. Patch
brought it
home
a fairly disappointing 9th place in GT.
Had we not had the
Prototype trouble we did, we feel a top 5 was very possible. Still, there were many cars with worse issues than ours, so the
standings got stirred up a bit. Cory
and Leh retained their 6th place in the driver standings, but
the
Autometrics Motorsports
Car #14 team is up to 4th in the championship. The next race on Grand Am’s very busy calendar is another
6-hour at Watkins Glen in just a few weeks.
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