The race event was short in comparison to most of our events. We had no promoter test day and our event was held over the course of a day and a half. Normally we run with the GS cars but the two groups were separated and they had all of their practice, qualifying, and their race on the same day. Our schedule was initially set up the same and we were only scheduled out on track on Friday. We ended up having a schedule change so we had two practices and our qualifying on Friday with our race on Saturday morning.

We arrived late on Wednesday night and the closest hotel I could find when I made my reservations was in Grand Mere about 30 minutes from the track. We got lost heading to the track on Thursday morning due to our lack of the French language but I did make it in time for my practice. Since Chris left we didn’t have a second driver lined up but Jeff was able to find a French Canadian guy, Etienne Borgeat, from the Canadian Touring Car Championship. He was driving a Solstice in that series and I’m not sure he’d ever done any endurance racing but has raced at Trois Rivieres many times.

I took the first part of the session and I was amazed at how quickly the track came back to me. My session went well and I was pretty pleased since I didn’t have much time on the track. This would definitely be the weekend I’d have to step it up quickly to get on pace. Etienne took the car second and was just a tenth or two of a second fast than I was. We were paddocked outside of the track and had to leave our cars inside the track. We didn’t have much opportunity to do much to the cars in between sessions.

The second session went even better but Etienne was in the car first and when I got in the brake pedal was very low. It was a little scary as we were racing on a street course surrounded by walls with no margin for error. I ended up having to brake early to make sure I had the car slowed enough for the corners and my session actually went pretty well. My lap times were about a half second quicker than they had been in the first session.

We didn’t really make any set up changes on the car as it was handling really well. I got new brake pads and tires for qualifying and was hoping to drop a good second or so. I think I struggled with the new brakes and ended up braking too hard and too late for most of the corners. I didn’t feel like I was carrying as much speed as I could have through the corners. I was focused too much on my time and not my driving. I ended up 17th on grid and only bettered my previous time by a couple tenths of a second.

The start of the race seemed strange without the GS cars in our group and it was a very slow start. I got a decent start but was trying to be cautious into the first few corners. There were no major incidents until we got to Turn six which is a very tight corner with no runoff or area for any mistakes. Two cars were collected there and we almost slowed to a stop. We ended up going full course caution after that and on the third lap Jeff pulled me in for a fuel top off. I was running second to last and we had talked about this before the race started. We can only run about an hour and five minutes on a tank of fuel and they felt this would be a good strategy if I ended up towards the back of the field. It only took about 15 seconds but by the time I got back out on course, I wasn’t running with anyone. I could see one of the Minis up in front of me but didn’t think I could catch him. Since I didn’t have a lot of time on the track I had a hard tine gauging my speed and wasn’t doing as well as I would have liked. I had to really dig and it was more of a mental challenge than anything else. I finally saw the #82 BMW 330i in front of me and that helped me push harder. We went full course caution again about 30 minutes into the race and I finally got caught up again with the pack. I was able to pass a few cars but then came to the Mazdaspeed 3 of Charlie Putnum. I knew I was faster than him but just couldn’t find a way by. I had followed him for a good 20+ minutes when I finally just dove inside on Turn 6. I had followed him for so long and he had a really good entrance into both Turns 3 and 6 which helped me go faster through there. I drove for another half hour or so until we got another full course caution about an hour and fifteen minutes into the race. This was when we changed drivers. Our pit stop went well but one of our crew guys had both feet on pit wall. This resulted in a 5 second penalty for us and then Etienne was off. He drove very well and clean throughout the remainder of the race and we were running as high as 7th. He dropped down to 9th towards the end of the race and then the #12 Kia of Burrows/Hopwood came into the pits with some type of engine problem with only a few laps left in the race. This moved us back up to 8th which is where we finished. Our car finished the race clean and in the top 10. That’s quite a feat for this event and a great finish for us and the Next Generation team. It was an awesome weekend and I’m hoping for an even better weekend next month at Miller for our season finale.

New Teammate John Bosch

A few things have changed since the Mid Ohio race weekend. Chris Brown, my former co driver decided not to finish out the season with us so I was racing with another one of the guys that has run a few races with us this year, John Bosch. We had three cars this weekend; Peter London was co driving with Boris Said and Ted Giovanis was co driving with Shawn Dewey.

We arrived on Wednesday night and low and behold, no hotel issues! That seems to have been the start of my last few race weekends. We arrived to the track on Thursday and missed the 1^st session which turned out to be 2 laps. They had an issue on the 1^st lap, black flagged the session, sent everyone out again, and then black flagged the session again. We didn’t miss much at all. The 2^nd session went well and I ended up driving the full session. The track seemed to come back to me and I was pretty satisfied for my first session on track. John and I split the 3^rd session and we decided we needed to make some changes. The car was oversteering quite a bit and was pretty unmanageable. Every time I tried to get on the gas the rear end stepped out.

Friday morning we had some alternator issues with the car which was causing other issues with the car. Since we had made a set up change, we were trying to get a feel if we were headed in the right direction. John and I both took 2 laps. The team put a new alternator on the car and I went back to the hotel to do a little work and stay cool. The temperatures were in the mid 90’s with horrible humidity and it was just unbearable. We still had some looseness in the car for the 2^nd practice and I just didn’t feel like I drove well. The heat was taking a toll on me and the lack of track time affected my confidence. After the day I went over all of my data with VJ, my coach and he said that I had made some improvements on the turns that I had worked on. We discussed with Jeff and Johnny and decided to change springs and the rear sway bar for qualifying. We had been on old tires the last 2 days so this probably contributed to the looseness.

The team had a lot of work to do on the three cars and were there at the track working until about 9pm. Peter and Taryn went into town and came back with pizza and beer for everyone.

Boris and the entourage.

Trying to avoid getting hit by all the GS cars

I arrived about 10am on Saturday for qualifying and felt really confident and good about the changes we’d made. The qualifying session went well and I had clean track. I went out with my teammate, Shawn Dewey, and tried to keep up but couldn’t. I ended up shaving off about 2 seconds from my previous times and drove really well. I felt really good about it but it but we were still close to the back of the field. Shawn ended up qualifying 6^th so it was very exciting for the #64 car. Peter had some issues with his car and only got a couple laps and ended up behind me.

We generally qualify the day before the race but it was kind of nice to have a qualifying the same morning as our race. I was feeling pretty confident and excited about the race. The start went well and I was able to avoid the usual 1^st lap chaos but about 4 laps in, I got a large splash of power steering fluid on my windshield. Fortunately it hit my windshield (and a it in my face!) before I noticed it in the steering wheel. I was prepared and just muscled the car into the corner. It let loose just as I was entering a very fast corner. I made my way back to pit lane and the team took a look at it. I thought a line had broken but it was actually the cap that had popped loose. The team refilled it and put the cap back on and sent me back out. When I re-entered the track, I was right in front of all the GS cars. Definitely not the place you want to be on your first lap out after an issue like that. I still had some air in the line and was having intermittent steering issues. I just held my breath and tried to stay out of their way and point them by. I was lucky and made it without any contact. About 4 laps later the power steering blew again. I came into pit lane again and they pushed me back to our paddock. The team ended up  having to replace the reservoir as it appeared the heat had melted the threads and that was why the cap kept blowing off. They were very quick but we still went down quite a few laps.

When I got back out, everything seemed just fine and I focused on just driving. I had been in the car (part of it just sitting while they fixed the power steering reservoir) for about an hour and 20 minutes and was just hoping for a full course caution so we could do a driver change. It was so hot and I was definitely getting tired and overheated. Finally, I saw my Delphi light come on and had three laps until the team brought me in to do our driver change. I am not sure I could have driven much longer.

The rest of the race was pretty uneventful for John. He did a great job, set fast race lap in lap 54 and brought the car in for the finish. Unfortunately, our teammates were not so lucky. Peter got hit fairly early in the race and also cut a tire. He was running in 9^th place and went back a few positions because of this. Boris did a good job in the race but due to the earlier issues, there just wasn’t time to make up the difference. He was running one of the fastest lap times in the class at the end of the race though. Shawn (and co driver Ted) had the worst of the weekend. Shawn had gone off course mid race and was waived back on by a corner worker right in front of the #09 Sunoco Camaro. The Camaro t-boned him and ended the race for both cars. It was a hard hit and bent the roll cage in the #64 car. Shawn ended up going to the hospital with a broken hand.

It was a very long and extremely hot weekend and not pleasant racing conditions. I’m looking forward to Trois Rivieres next month and hoping it won’t be as hot and humid.

New Photos in these galleries:

Watkins Glen 2010

Limerock Park 2010

Friends and Family 2010

Over 30 minutes of racing videos added:

Driver change practice at Barber

MX-5 crashes at VIR

Cobalt Crash at VIR in front of Chris Brown

Subaru punts Chris Brown off track in a turn at Watkins Glen

Bits and Pieces from  VIR

Watkins Glen Qualifying

Watkins Glen Racing Action

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.

Watkins Glen June 2010

I honestly thought we had left all our bad luck behind us at Lime Rock and that we were due for a great weekend but it wasn’t in the cards. We were just off our Lime Rock weekend with the two blown motors and were hoping for a successful weekend at The Glen.

We had a promoter test day on Thursday and had three sessions. We ended up have a thermostat issue on Thursday which caused my temperature to jump around. It would go from 190 to 240 and just continued to bounce around.  I brought the car in and the team determined it was a bad thermostat and replaced it which seemed to cure our problems. Each session was cut short due to black flags and Chris and I probably got about 10 laps each. Fortunately, we had tested about a month ago with the team. I felt like I didn’t really get up to speed due to the lack of track time so I decided to go back to my motel and watch video for the evening.

I came to the track fired up on Friday but it didn’t start out well for us. Chris took the first session which again got black flagged. When he got sent back out, he got hit by the #35 GS Subaru. The driver said the ABS failed but watching the video it appears he just broke way too late and used Chris to stop. It broke our right side suspension and caved in the door with our new bodywork and graphics. We had another practice session at 3pm and qualifying at 5pm that day. Some of my friends were concerned that we weren’t going to make qualifying but I knew Jeff and the team would have our car repaired. Sure enough, with a couple hours to spare before the 2^nd practice, our car was ready to go.

I took the first part of the practice session but was too focused on listening to all the noises. I was picking up some pavement noise on the track which I thought was the car and I just didn’t trust the car until the last few laps. I brought it back in so Chris could get a few laps before our race on Saturday since I’d be the one qualifying. He said the car felt perfect and really hooked up so we decided to leave the same set up. We actually both felt that this had been the best our car had felt all season. I was pretty psyched up for qualifying and told Johnny I wanted to go up to grid early to get up front so I could maximize our track time and hopefully get some clean laps. I ended up behind a Civic who had been faster than me in the previous sessions and I was hoping to get a draft from her. I tucked behind for a lap and realized she was slowing me down so tried to get around but it took me a couple laps. I finally hooked up with one of the Freedom MX-5’s and ended up with a 2:14.4 which was 2.5 seconds faster than I had been. I was pretty pleased with the time but knew I probably could have done a little better had I gotten around the Civic earlier. It was only good enough for a 29^th starting position in our 28 car field.

I reviewed data and video each night and at the track with VJ. I had struggled a bit up until qualifying and needed to make sure I was prepared for the race on Saturday morning. We had a 10:15 start time and had to be on grid about 9:20. I felt like it was going to be a good race for us and I was getting pumped. We gridded up for our race after the recon lap and my thermostat went from about 175 to 230 in just a couple minutes. I radioed to Johnny and he thought it was just because we weren’t moving. I had turned on the fan and it didn’t lower the temperature like it normally does. Once we started moving for our pace laps, it seemed to come down immediately but I was still concerned about it. I didn’t get a very good start. After the first lap the temperature started jumping around again. I radioed back to the team; 180, 240, 197, 245, 260, 220…I was doing my best to relay the temperatures and find out what they wanted me to do but I was having a difficult time watching the gauges, talk to the team, and drive. I ended up spinning in the bus stop but fortunately there is a lot of run off area there. I got back on track but the temperature was still jumping around. The GS cars started catching me and I was trying to let them by since I wasn’t up to speed. The temperature seemed to stick at 290 and the stock gauge on the car was pegged as well. I started to smell burning oil and we decided to bring the car in. The team towed me back to our garage and attempted to fix our issues to no avail.

It was such a devastating feeling to have another DNF. This was our 2^nd weekend in a row where we only completed 6 laps of a 2 ½ hour race. Our team worked so hard this weekend and we were definitely due for a good finish. We had four cars out on track this weekend and everything was very well organized. Chris and I both drove well and it seemed that we just had issues that were beyond our control. The car gave no indications of any trouble on Friday after the thermostat was replaced.

I commented to a couple friends that the highs of racing are SO high but the lows are also incredibly low. It’s such a blow to the team and Chris and I. I know we are still incredibly lucky to be doing this but sometimes I need to remind myself of this. I ran into one of my friends at the airport on my return flight and we caught up with our stories of the weekend. He told me that his wife was diagnosed with leukemia several years ago but that she’s doing well now. We both talked about living each day to the fullest and appreciating these opportunities. I know that all of my friends would love to do a Grand Am race and although we’ve had some bad weekends recently, I still have a great time at the track with my team and friends. I am incredibly lucky….I know it, although sometimes I have to remind myself of it.

As I wrote two weeks ago, I had a pretty rough weekend in Connecticut for the SCCA National race and was hoping I would leave all those gremlins behind. I ended up on the same flight and it arrived just as late as it had two weeks before. Fortunately, I had called Hertz in advance and they picked me up even though I arrived at 2:30am, an hour and a half after they closed. It was about 4am when I finally got to my hotel. I had some previous issues with my hotel reservations and Expedia somehow screwed up my reservation that I made three months in advance. They ended up finding me another hotel in the same town which was quite a bit cheaper which was nice. When I arrived, they had two rooms reserved for me and the desk clerk kept arguing that I had booked two rooms. I assured him that I was by myself and just needed one room. I ended up taking the downstairs room and was shocked when I walked in to find a heart shaped ‘love tub’ in the center of my room! I was doing okay until I was joking about this with my buddies the next day at the track and they reminded me of what probably goes on in that room!

We had a driver’s meeting at 9am on Friday morning. I ended up missing the meeting to get a few more minutes of sleep but still only managed to get 3 hours total for the night. I felt like someone threw sand in my eyes when I got up. Even the large coffee didn’t help me much. It was petty rough to have to concentrate on learning a new track and be totally focused on what I was doing. We didn’t have a promoter test day so it was key to get all the track time we could and really make the most of the sessions. Chris had just picked up the car a few days before after it had been wrapped with our new graphics. I hadn’t seen the design and didn’t know what it looked like other than it was burnt orange, black, and white. I was very impressed with it when I saw it. It really looks spectacular! It’s like we have a brand new car!

We had two practice sessions which Chris and I both split. I struggled a lot on the first one just getting back in the groove of the track and probably due to lack of sleep. I did a little better in the second session but still wasn’t feeling as confident as I would have liked. I was qualifying this weekend so I was a bit nervous. We had been selected as fifth in the first five for qualifying but my team owner, Jeff, elected to send me out closer to the back of the field which was a good decision and something I was more comfortable with. I had been in the top five before at Miami and did well but since Lime Rock was a much shorter track, they wouldn’t have as much of a gap for the first five as they did at Miami. Jeff’s concern was that the top qualifiers would catch me in a few laps and either push me off to get around or I’d get nervous and end up in trouble. It was a great plan but unfortunately, I didn’t make a full lap. The motor lost power about halfway through the first lap and I coasted into pit lane. I’m not sure how much better I would have qualified but it was very disappointing to lose the motor. We only had one test weekend on the motor at Watkins Glen. I felt horrible for the crew. It had been a long day and now they had to stay and replace the motor. I hung around until about 7pm but needed to get back to my hotel and get some sleep. I felt so exhausted from the lack of sleep and probably some of the disappointment of the blown motor but I knew the car was in great hands with the Next Gen team.

I arrived back on Saturday morning completely rested and ready to race. Jeff was still doing some last minute adjustments on the motor and it looked like we were going to cut it pretty close but I wasn’t worried. They performed this same feat at VIR last year and although it was a scramble, we made it then as well. It had just started to rain before we went to grid and was pretty wet. It looked like it was going to dry out but I don’t have much experience in the rain. Jeff made the decision to start me on rain tires which was a great call. Most of the guys started on dry tires and it would be very slippery for the first few laps. I knew I’d feel more confident on the rains and hopefully could make up a few positions. Jeff told me to just feel out the motor and keep an eye on the gauges during the recon lap. Everything seemed fine, it was running at the correct temperature, the oil pressure was good, and it sounded good.

The start of the race was much cleaner than I anticipated and I was shocked that even on the wet track no one went off initially. Since I haven’t raced a lot in the rain, I’m not very good at knowing where the limits of the car are and thought I’d gain a few positions just by attrition. Since that didn’t happen, I knew I had to put my foot down and really push. The track was starting to dry out already and I knew that my rain tires would start slowing down as the track dried. I needed to look for wet track to keep them cool. I didn’t initially notice any odd sounds with the car but when I started to push it, the power didn’t seem as strong and I wasn’t catching the car in front of me. I was on lap 5 when I noticed that it was significantly down on power and radioed to the team. I was coming down the front straight and just beginning to turn into Turn 1 when it locked up. I thought initially it was the differential and thought perhaps it was locked which might have caused resistance in the car resulting in the lower speeds but when I tried to restart it to get out of the grass and out of the impact zone, I could hear the rods clanking in the car.

What an awful feeling being in the car two days in a row and having the motor let go. I felt like I had some kind of a Lime Rock curse. Two weeks ago, my MX-5 lost the motor there as well. I think I’ve only lost five motors or so in my thirteen years of racing so to have two go in one weekend was really heartbreaking. Our races normally go by so quickly and this was by far the longest race. I found that I definitely prefer driving over spectating.  From what Jeff told me before I left the track, it appears that the oil pump broke. He said that they’ve been redesigned and this was one of the older ones and they’ve had some previous issues with them. I really felt horrible for the entire team and Chris as well. Chris’ wife, daughter, and son in law came out to see him race and were able to just see him in the two practice sessions. The one good thing about this weekend is that we didn’t damage our new body work and graphics…but then again, we didn’t have much time on track!

To top off the weekend, somehow when I looked at my itinerary for my return flight, I saw the time my flight left Chicago and not the time it left Hartford. I was pushing it a bit to begin with but didn’t realize my mistake until I had gotten through security and was heading to the gate. Fortunately the airport was quiet and I made it to the gate just in time! Initially I had thought it might be easier to stay out on the east coast for our race at Watkins Glen but hadn’t realized all the hotels in the area were so expensive. Since I’ve been using credit card miles for my flights all year, that was free so I decided to go home for a few days, get my dog, Kiara, out of the kennel, get my race clothes cleaned, and show up for one day at the office!

I am heading back to New York on Wednesday for our Watkins Glen race. We tested there about a month ago so I’ve had two days on the track. It’s an intimidating track for me but I’ve been watching video and reviewing my track notes and feel I will do well. I am really anxious to leave all of my Lime Rock gremlins and bad karma behind.

Text ST36 to 20123

Text ST36 to 20123 to vote for Laura and Next Generation Motorsports, and a chance to win a set of Continental Tires. Text as often as you wish until May 30th 2010.

In the GRAND-AM Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge, not all of the competition takes place at the track.

The 2010 season will not only feature ten rounds of racing to determine the GRAND-AM Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge Champions, but every race weekend will also see the teams vying for a win from another source – their fans.

Text ST36 to 20123

Introduced in 2010 as part of the comprehensive new partnership with GRAND-AM, the “Continental Tire Fan Favorite” program allows race fans to vote for their favorite team or driver via text message. The competition encourages Continental Sports Car Tire Challenge teams to engage their own fan bases to rally the text support needed to win the prize.

And the competition isn’t just for the teams, because when the fans make their votes, they also get the chance to enter to win a set of Continental Tires at each Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge Series event weekend.

The team in each class (Grand Sport and Street Tuner) that receives the largest number of votes for each race will receive a $500 cash award as Continental Tire will reward $1000 at every Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge race.  Just like the on-track championship battle, there is something to compete for all year long as the individual team, from either class, that receives the highest number of total fan votes throughout the season will receive a $2,500 year end “Fan Favorite Cash Award” to be presented the year end banquet.

As the teams and drivers prepare to do battle once again next weekend at Virginia International Raceway for the Bosch Engineering 250, the results of the opening two rounds of voting were released.

APR Motorsport emerged as the winners in the Grand Sport Class voting for the Homestead Miami Speedway round, with Momentum Motorsports taking the lead as the Fan Favorite during the Barber 200 race weekend.

In the Street Tuner class, the new team is looking like old pros as Bimmerworld has won both the Homestead Miami Speedway and Barber 200 rounds of the voting.

If you want to get the chance to win a set of Continental Tires while letting your voice be heard for your favorite race team, go to www.continentaltire.com to find out how to vote for your favorite team!

Official Rules

Lime Rock Win

Well, I should have known it was going to be a weird trip when the creepy cab driver showed up to take me to the airport.  He smelled like he hadn’t had a bath in at least a week and had cigarettes butts in little cups all over the cab. He drove with his windows down and ashes were flying all over. Absolutely disgusting and I was thankful it was only about a 10 minute drive to the airport. NASTY!

I called Randy from the airport just to find out what time everyone would be at the track and when I should arrive for registration. He said, ‘you’re coming out Saturday, right?’…and I thought to myself…oops, we definitely are not on the same page. I don’t think I had really confirmed anything with him but just assumed he’d be there with the cars on Friday. Rain was in the forecast for Friday and I guess some of the drivers decided not to come out. Randy said he’d put Art to work on my car and make sure it was there in the morning.

My flight to Dallas was delayed to tornados but finally left about an hour late. I had the rudest person behind me on my flight that kept kicking my seat but it was all over when he took his shoes and socks off and stuck his stinky foot up on my armrest. Was it my day to encounter every nasty gross person out there? We arrived about an hour late and fortunately my connecting flight into Hartford was also delayed leaving due to the weather. I was supposed to arrive into Hartford at 1am and ended up getting in at 2am. I had just over an hour drive to my hotel but….Thrifty car rental was closed. I definitely won’t be using them again. I didn’t have much choice at this point and was thinking I’d have to get a cab to a local hotel for the night and try to tackle a rental car in the morning but a Hertz bus finally drove through and the driver was kind enough to stop when I waved at her. She told me they had closed at 1am but she made a call to the manager at the office who said they would wait for me. She took me to the off site rental and the manager actually asked me what kind of car I wanted and said they’d match the rate I had been quoted by Thrifty. Sweet! I’d have taken any car at that point but they gave me a great Mazda 3. Way to go Hertz. They were super nice and very accommodating…in fact, perhaps the only nice people I had encountered all day! I finally got to my hotel about 4am after a very long drive through what appeared to be beautiful country. I saw a lot of wildlife including a very large frog who decided to cross the road just as I drove over him. I stopped and fortunately I hadn’t hit him. He must have been right under the car. Lucky guy! I should have known after my late night drive to Watkins Glen a few weeks ago that I should probably try to arrive a little earlier but I’ve been taking so much time off work I’ve been trying to catch as late a flight as I can get. My GPS worked okay but wanted to take me down what appeared to be a one lane dirt road. I was afraid I was going to get stuck since it was raining pretty heavily. I backed up and continued on the paved road and was redirected. There is really nothing around there. It was very similar to Watkins Glen but fortunately, I didn’t encounter any cops or speeding tickets on this trip!

True to his word, Art was there at the track with Randy’s smaller trailer and my car. My first session in the morning was about 9:30am but I really needed to get a couple hours of sleep so I called Art and told him I’d be there around noon. I went out for my 1pm session and was just starting my third lap when I lost power. Initially I thought it was the coil pack which is a weak part on the MX-5 but then realized the motor had no compression. I was able to make it back to pit lane where the car completely died. Ugh…that was a long day on Thursday for 2 ½ laps of track time.

Art packed up the trailer with my car and started back to Randy’s. They were either going to replace the motor in my car or bring me one of Randy’s other cars for Saturday morning. I decided to use this time to do a bit of site seeing. I went to an animal rescue preserve which was pretty interesting and stopped at a local roadside ice cream store. Grant, the young kid who waited on me, told me he was enrolled in a tech school and that he loved cars and wanted to be a mechanic. He has a BMW so I told him I’d get him some passes for our Memorial Day event. I’m sure Jeff and company will put him to good use. I ended up back at the track to watch a little of the remaining races and ran into some friends that I used to race with. They were BBQ’ing some hotdogs and hamburgers for dinner so I hung around for a little while. I headed back to my hotel fairly early to try and get some work done and get to sleep early. . About 9pm my smoke detector started buzzing. The battery was low so I pulled it out but the system was hardwired and continued to beep. I called the manager and he was very quick to come up and change it for me. I’m glad it didn’t go off in the middle of the night or I would have pulled it right out of the ceiling.

Chris, my co driver in Grand Am was nice enough to drive 3 hours from Rhode Island to come out and watch my race and cheer me on. He’s a great guy and I’m lucky to have him as a teammate.

Randy and Art arrived with the big rig and my ‘loaner’ car along with my former teammate, John Kuitward’s car. Since they had qualifying on Friday, we were going out in the back of the pack to start the race but we had a 5 minute warm up session which we decided to take advantage of. On the 2^nd lap someone hit the wall on the front straight but they didn’t black flag the session. We were starting our 3^rd lap and I was behind John when I saw a small puff of white smoke and then a larger one. He ended up getting crossed up a bit from the oil he had dropped but fortunately made it off the side of the track without any problem…however, the guy in the Spec Miata behind me wasn’t so lucky. I think he spun in John’s oil and totaled his car. When John finally got towed in he was telling me he went over to make sure they guy was okay…John said he just walked away when he heard him cursing as he didn’t think the guy knew it was his car that dropped the oil. John’s motor had just been freshly done so I know he had to be really disappointed. It appeared to have broken a rod bolt and ended up with a huge hole in the block.

Wow, we were not having a good weekend. John was able to borrow a friend’s Spec Miata for the race and brought it over to do a quick alignment on it. He was trying to decide whether to even drive it as it wasn’t handling very well. The owner of the car was driving it in a regional race before John and unfortunately he ended up having contact with a couple other cars at the start of the SM race. It broke the right side rear suspension so that made John’s decision easy.

I was running in Group 1 in STU and somehow convinced them to let me run in Group 3 in STO as well. The STU race was pretty uneventful. This group was filled with mostly Showroom Stock as well as Spec Miatas that ran in the STU class for additional track time. I had to start from the back of the field as I hadn’t qualified on Friday. I got stuck behind a Mini Cooper who tried to block me every time I attempted a pass. Since I wasn’t driving my own car or worried about points, I just hung back until the Mini finally went off on it’s own. There were a few cars that appeared to have some bad damage by the end of the race. I had one group in between my races and then back out on track in STO. This was a group with the big bore cars; GT-1 – GT-3, American Sedan, etc. My only competition in STO was a silver Mustang with a gigantic rear wing. I’m not sure if he was sleeping at the start but I made it into turn one well ahead of him. He then made some dive bomb pass on me a lap into the race. Randy radioed me less than half way through the race that he was in pit lane and done for the weekend. Easy win. I just tried to stay out of everyone’s race. Most of the cars were running an average speed over 100 mph and I was in the 80’s. There was a huge speed differential but I really needed some more track time. I’m actually quite surprised that SCCA let me run in this class.

It was a good weekend despite some of the misfortunes. I got some decent track time in and felt I did okay on the track. It’s been 7 months since I’ve driven my MX-5 so it was nice to be back in a Mazda. The track is very short and easy to learn. There are 7 turns and only one of them goes left so you just keep turning right! I need to step it up a bit when I go back with the BMW in a week and a half. We don’t have a promoter test day so I was lucky just to have gotten a little time on the track. I think the majority of the Grand Am guys have all driven the track before.

Next up is the Grand Am race at Lime Rock on May 29^th. I’m super excited and think we’ll have a great race. This is one of the few races that we’re running GS and ST separately so it should be fun.

Yep, that's the carpet

I am on my flight back from the test weekend with my team at Watkins Glen. Chris and I did a test weekend with an organization called Trackmasters. It was a really great weekend and I think we accomplished a lot. Trackmasters did a great job of running the weekend giving us great track time. Aside from one black NSX that I was ready to punt, most of the other drivers were great. You had to get a point by in order to pass and apparently this guy thought he was Michael Schumacher. It was about 70% street cars (Carreras, NSX’s, BMW’s. etc.) and 30% race cars. We race there in about a month and I was very surprised that we were the only Continental team that was testing this weekend.

Chris and I entered Friday and Saturday since it appeared to be more track time than the Saturday/Sunday test. I was trying to limit my time off work and flew out mid afternoon on Thursday. I arrived at 12:30am at Syracuse and had almost a 2 hour drive to my motel. I got lost in Geneva when my navigation system kept telling me to take a right on 14 and then “make the next legal U turn”. After 4 passes through this town, I had a cop follow me the last two laps of Geneva and then finally pull me over when I was about ready to sleep in my car and figure it out in the morning. He asked why I had driven through town so many times…Help, I’m just trying to get to Watkins Glen! After asking me why I was going there (duh!), he finally sent me to the correct route. By this time, it was about 2am and I was exhausted and just wanted to get to my hotel. I was doing about 90+mph (stupid at night) and saw a deer on the side of the road which actually made me slow down to about 80mph. All of a sudden, I saw some lights behind me and I knew no one would be as stupid as me to be going that fast at night so I figured it was a cop. Sure enough a couple miles down the road he turned on his lights. I pulled over and it took him at least 10 minutes to even come up to my car. I was about ready to just pull away since it seemed kind of creepy in the middle of nowhere being a city girl but then thought if I’m in jail, I definitely will not get to drive in the morning! He finally came up to my car and asked if I knew why he pulled me over and where I was going. Being the honest girl I am, I said I was speeding and heading to the race track. Crap; not good! He asked if I knew how fast I was going… I did but wasn’t sure where he clocked me so I just told him I had no idea. He said he clocked me at 78mph in a 55. So, a good thing that he got me after I saw the deer but apparently he knew I was much faster and said he knew I saw the deer. Oops. He took my license and rental agreement and was in his car for about 30 minutes which was just making more angry that I had even been speeding in the first place since this was wasting all the time I was trying to save myself. He finally came back and apologized that it had taken so long. He said it took a long time for the information to come back from California; probably our lack of budget! He handed me my license and rental agreement back. I assumed I had a ticket in there as well. and asked if I could just mail it in and he said, “I didn’t write you a ticket, just please slow down.” Thank you!

I finally got to my motel about 3am and couldn’t remember where the lady said she was going to leave my key. After driving around, I finally decided to try the office door. There was a sign posted inside the front door that said, “L Olson, Room 37, key is in door, light is on”. Definitely country! I was shocked when I walked in my room and found a total 1960’s décor, complete with the pink tile in the bathroom; gold, brown, and green carpet, and a paisley bedspread. The next day when I got up, I found a beautiful view of Seneca Lake from my back window. The place was very clean but very dated. I met the owners that morning when I officially checked in and found out that Vic has been racing since the 60’s and had done some Can Am racing. He had all sorts of old, very cool, racing pictures of so many drivers. It was a great collection and he and Linda were very nice. I will be staying there again for our race in June.

We had to get ‘checked out’ by Trackmasters before we could go out on track. I thought a SCCA and Grand Am license would be sufficient but I was told that even Boris Said had to go through it the previous year. I took my rental car out (don’t tell Hertz) with the instructor and it was just too slow and horrible for them to even assess me. They told me to take out the race car and we’d do a lead and follow. I guess I did okay as they signed off on me. The first couple sessions were pretty tough. The track intimidated me more than I thought it would. I didn’t do as well as I thought I would on Friday but was very glad I had decided to test.

Friday night I was going to go back to my hotel to work and watch some video but Chris, my co driver, invited me to dinner with he and his wife. They had driven down from Rhode Island and hadn’t met her before. I decided to join them for dinner and had a great time. Janet is a great lady and it was really nice to get to know her.

Lara Tallman came out to test with us on Saturday morning. She drove with us at VIR and it was good to see her again. Saturday seemed to go together much better for me. I dropped 2 seconds in the first session and another 2 seconds in the second session. Jeff, my team owner, asked me after the first session what I had done to go faster. I told him I had reviewed some video and just thought through some things. I felt like he was a bit disappointed in my performance but I tend to start out pretty slow on a new track until I figure it out. By the end of the day, I felt like I had made a lot of progress and was super happy I had decided to go out there and test before the raceweekend. It was very beneficial to me and I couldn’t imagine trying to get up to speed in our Grand Am weekend.

I am racing in a National SCCA race in my MX-5 Cup car at Lime Rock in two weeks. I wanted to test in the BMW but we couldn’t get any test dates that worked with my schedule so Randy was kind of enough to coordinate a SCCA weekend for me. I’m looking forward to it and hoping I can get acquainted with the track since we don’t have a promoter test day for the Lime Rock Grand Am race.

I’m completely wiped out tonight after two back to back race weekends and trying to catch up at work only to leave again but I still can’t help but think how lucky I am. I am having such a great time this season and feel so incredibly lucky to be doing this.