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Mac Papers and Mac Business Products were on board again as sponsors for this year’s Bosch Engineering 250 Grand Am Rolex Series Race at Virginia International Raceway. Like last year, Mac Papers had a hospitality tent for their VIPs, and everyone had a great time.
Mac McGehee was scheduled to qualify and start the race with Cory Friedman driving the second stint. The event this year featured unusually limited practice time, so our focus was on getting both drivers up to speed as much as possible. With Grand Am’s evolving rules regarding mandatory stops and driving time, it is critical that you do not lose a lap early. We expected the race to run the full 250 mile / 77 lap distance rather than the 2:45 time limit. Mac started the race 21st in class and stayed close to that spot in the early running. The first yellow came out just past 15 minutes and gave most teams the opportunity to do the mandatory first stop. Since each driver must run a minimum of 30 minutes, we opted to do a stop-and-go and send McGehee back out. We hoped for another caution to keep the field tight through our driver change, but the yellow flags did not come out again until after the 1-hour mark, just a few minutes after we lost a lap to the GT class leader. Mac was in 20th position when he brought the car in for fuel, tires and a driver change. Unfortunately, the tire change did not happen this stop, as we had a problem with the air jacks. To avoid losing another lap, we sent Cory out on the aging qualifying tires, and again we were anxious to get another caution. We were again disappointed, as Cory was not able to run the pace we’d expected and was picking up positions much slower than we had hoped.
The third and final caution came out comfortably in our final stop window, and we were very happy to get new tires on the car. Our troubles were not over, however, as our air jack problem was more severe than we thought, and again the car would not go up. We had the floor jack ready and the crew changed 2 tires quickly; there was plenty of time to complete the change without going down a second lap. As the other side of the car was raised, the floor jack literally shattered, leaving us scrambling for another elusive jack. Finally acquiring another jack, we completed the stop, but it was about 10 seconds too late. Back under green for the last 15 laps, and our pace was good, but the damage was already done. We took the checkered flag in 18th position, 2 laps down from the GT winner.
We are disappointed in the equipment failures and ultimate results, but were very happy with the team, drivers and sponsors. Our next race is the Watkins Glen 6-hour event. We won that race in 2005, and are looking forward to attempting a repeat this season where Mac and Cory will be joined by Rolex 24 winner Ian Baas.
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