Mid Ohio June 2010

Well, it started off as a great weekend and looked like we were going to finally have a good race and finish. I hadn’t driven Mid Ohio since the SCCA Runoffs in 2005 and was really excited to be going back. It’s always been a fun track for me and the fans that come out for the races are great!

We arrived Wednesday night on the midnight flyer again (that seems to just be the start of my bad luck recently) and got to the hotel in Mansfield at almost 3am. I booked the hotel at the beginning of the season through Expedia. When we got to the hotel, the lady at the front desk gave me a smoking room. When I opened the door, the smoke literally poured out from the room. I didn’t even go inside. I went back to the front desk and asked her for a non smoking room as my reservation stated. She was very unaccommodating and said she didn’t have any other rooms and couldn’t help me. This is my third horrible experience with Expedia and the hotels I’ve booked through them in as many race weekends. We ended up calling around and finally ended up at the Country Inn and Suites. The front desk was very nice and gave us a great deal. I think everything in Mansfield and Lexington was sold out so we were very lucky.

Testing on Thursday went well and thankfully, we didn’t have to be at the track until noon since I hadn’t gotten to sleep until almost 5am. I actually thought our 1^st test session was at 1:15, not 12:15 and we missed that session but made the other two sessions. I was a bit rusty for the first session out but found 5 seconds between the 2^nd and 3^rd sessions.

We had 2 practice sessions and qualifying on Friday and the practice sessions both went well. We decided to be a bit aggressive on the set up change and it turned out to be a good choice but I think we may have gone a bit too far. I had a good qualifying session but my lap times were just not what I was looking for. VJ, my driver coach, talked to me the night before and we discussed just focusing on my driving techniques and he didn’t want me worrying about my lap times. I understood what he was telling me but in the back of every driver’s head it’s all about the lap times. It wasn’t until after my qualifying session that I sat down with VJ and told him that I understood what he was telling me on Thursday afternoon but I ‘got’ what he told me after my qualifying session. I was a little sloppy on track. I was focusing so much on my lap times and not on what I should have been. I drove hard but not smart. I really wanted to see a 1:39 on my dash and knew I could do it but I just kept getting 40’s after 40’s. I got frustrated and made a few mistakes. It was then that I totally knew I blew it by not recognizing the intent of what VJ had been trying to tell me; ‘focus on your right foot….brake and throttle application, and the times will come’. We ended up 25^th on grid. Sometimes you realize things a little too late.

We had a final practice on Saturday morning. Chris took the car first and made two set up changes. When I got in the car for the last few laps, it felt okay but it still felt like we had a little bit of looseness in the high speed left handers and some push in other areas.
We made one final set up change before the race and hoped it would be good.

Mid Ohio June 2010

The start of the race was great. I had no contact and made it through clean. We ended up going full course caution early in the race and had several more during my time in the car. The track was very hot and greasy and it appeared everyone was struggling with the same problems. Towards the end of my run, I was running so tightly with the Compass 360 Hondas, my car was getting hot and I was worried about the temperature. We had an overheating issue at Watkins Glen and I was trying to keep an eye on my dash. My crew chief told me to just poke my nose out of the pack and get a bit of air. It seemed to do the trick. Finally on the third or fourth full course caution, my team brought me in to do our driver change and pit stop. It was executed well and Chris was off. He radioed back to the team that the car felt good. That always makes me feel good as I don’t want to bring in a car that I’ve over driven or abused. He did really well but about 30 minutes into his race he appeared to have some significant squealing in the brakes. It seemed that he had an unusual noise for about a lap and then the car locked up going into Turn 9. He hit the tire wall and ended up in the gravel trap. He was towed out but the car wouldn’t start once they got it out. By the time the car was towed back to the main area of the track, it was too late to even attempt to find out the problems and fix them so we had our 4th DNF of the season. It’s very disappointing and especially since the car (and drivers) ran flawlessly all weekend. It’s just so devastating for the entire team to spend so much time and effort on this and have this type of a result. I had no idea endurance racing would be this tough.

I am very thankful that Chris is okay and that there wasn’t more damage done to the car. Had this incident happened at the end of the back straight it could have been a lot worse. I know we will get through this and move on as a team. Our car felt very strong all weekend and I’m really excited to go back to New Jersey next month.

I appreciate the Next Gen team giving us a great car this weekend and spending Father’s Day weekend at the track. As I’ve said before, we’ve got the hardest working team in the paddock and I definitely appreciate them! I had a lot of friends out this past weekend to cheer us on and I appreciate everyone’s support this weekend.

Please check out photos and videos on my website. The Lime Rock and Watkins Glen photos and videos should be posted and we should have photos and videos from this past weekend’s Mid Ohio race up in about a week. Our race will be televised on Speed this coming Saturday, June 26^th at 1pm EST.  There’s a lot of exciting action so check it out! Our next race is at New Jersey Motorsports Park on July 17th.