This past weekend the Koni Challenge series went up to Canada’s Mosport raceway. This was the 3rd year in a row for me to race at Mosport and It has always been one of my favorite tracks. However, I would also go to add that it is one of the most challenging ones as well. Peter, my teammate, had not been there before but got up to speed quickly as the weekend started.
Mosport is know for its very high speed corners and its long back up-hill straight. Unfortunately, over the years Mosport has shown to not favor the Porsche platform as well as it dose for the other makes like the Mustangs and BMW M3’s.
In the practices I worked hard with the team to get a good set up on the car. I knew we would not have a super fast car, so we focused on getting a nice predictable and consistent car that would be good over the course of the 2.5hr race.
In qualifying Peter struggled with an ill handling car which resulted in a 19th place starting position for the race. After qualifying we did not have anymore chances to test any changes to the car because the next time the car would be on track was for the race. We made some set changes after long deliberation.
In the race peter once again was doing great. He only went up in the ranks. The Mustangs were really frustrating to get behind because they would be slow and out of control in the corners but then pull a huge gap on the straights. Peter got up to 16th when a poor driven Mustang started getting in his way, although Peter was far faster in the corners the mustang would block, hit, and then pull away on the straights. This is one of the hardest things in this series and I have learned just to deal with it.
Up untill about 1 hr into the race it looked like it was going to stay green with no crashes or anything. However, at the 1hr mark there was a crash and a full course yellow came out. This is when things get interesting. Grand-Am sent out the pace car who only job is to pick up the overall race leader and/or wave cars by until the race leader is directly behind them. However, Grand-Am never did any wave by’s to speak of and the leader was never behind the pace car. As a result many teams did not know when to pit or even if they were allowed to pit. It was all very unprofessional of grand-am and it is sad to see one of the most competitive racing series being so unorganized and poorly ran. When it was time for peter to come in and pit during our designated pit time there was another car in our pit area. This lead to further confusion in the pit area as the other team somehow managed to get their jack stuck under the front bumper of their Chevy Cobalt.
Once we actually got around to our pit stop things went well. The guys did a good job and there were no mistakes. I got in the car and did not really know what had just happened or even if we were on the lead lap still. I got in and had some good battles but the Mustangs along with our added 100LBS of “rewards weight” made it hard to get some moves done. We ended up finishing a respectable 12th, yet it was not what we were looking for. We should have moved up a couple spots due to cars that pitted illegally during the confusion; however, grand am did not take action or blame for their mistakes.
Our next track we go to is at Watkins Glen in New York on 4th of July weekend. We have been strong there in the past and both peter and I have good experience there which will pay off.
Keep you posted,
-scott
