The Fitzgerald Chronicles: Road America - [World Challenge GT]
8/5/2003 -
Last weekend the Speed World Challenge GT series traveled to Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. We were one of the support races for the Champ Car event. As usual, I was driving the #22 Porsche for 3R Racing. This was a split weekend for World Challenge, meaning that the Touring Car series was not in attendance, so I had only one car to worry about.
PRACTICE AND QUALIFYING
We had a test day on Thursday that included four sessions that were a minimum of thirty minutes each. We had made a change to our baseline set-up immediately after the race last weekend at Infineon Raceway, and it seemed like a good change because the Porsche was terrific right off the trailer.
The downside is that I was having a hard time finding anything to communicate to my engineer that might help us find an improvement in lap time. The good news was that we seemed to be running reasonably quick times relative to the other cars we were timing.
On Friday we had a single hour long practice session. I went out and did a long run on old tires and then we put on some stickers and did a practice qualifying run. I managed to post a 2:18.8, which was quickest by about seven tenths of a second. Second position was Randy Pobst in the Champion Audi. Normally this would be great news, but we knew that some of the cars were going slower than they had on the test day so we had a sense that they were holding back.
Saturday included a forty-five minute practice session and qualifying. We were again quickest with another 2:18.8, but this time a Viper was second quick with a lap somewhere in the 2:19’s. This was pretty scary because it was Dodge’s debut run of the new version of the Viper and it is obviously a pretty strong package right out of the box.
In spite of being quickest in both practice sessions we weren’t too optimistic going into qualifying because we felt like we had already shown our best lap. Qualifying was at 1:00pm and there was a rain shower that started around noon and then stopped in time for the track to start drying. For the most part there was a dry line when we went out on course, but there were still a few treacherous spots where the track was still wet.
In hindsight, the best strategy would have been to do a few reconnaissance laps on rain tires and then come in and switch to dry tires and cut a fast lap at the end of the session. The risk would be that someone would end up in the gravel trap and the session would end early, or that it would start raining again and the fast laps would all come early in the session.
I decided to go out and circulate on dry tires and then go for a fast lap as the track improved. Obviously, I wouldn’t cut my fast lap when the tires were at their best, but at least I would always have recorded a lap in the best conditions if there was an accident that ended the session or some more rain.
The result was that I cut my fast lap near the end of the session and it was a 2:19.2, which was slower than my practice times, but still good enough for fifth. I think that even if I had caught the tires at their best I still would have turned a high 2:18, which would have been either second or third. Bill Auberlen turned a 2:18.4 in his BMW to get the pole, followed by Stuck (BMW), Pobst (Audi) and Said (BMW).
THE RACE
The race started at 11:20am on Sunday, and as the race approached it looked like the weather might actually hold up in spite of most of the predictions. My standing start last weekend at Infineon Raceway was a complete disaster so we had spent a fair amount of time during the weekend trying to figure out how to get a decent launch. Our efforts paid off as my standing start was a good one and we immediately moved up into third place entering turn one. I was now following Hans Stuck in his BMW and Randy Pobst in the Champion Audi.
At some point during the opening laps I moved past Hans into second although I don’t remember where. It then took me a lap or two to catch up to Randy and I worked on him pretty hard because the three PTG BMWs were all tailing me very closely and I wanted to get to the front where I could get some clean track and try and open a gap.
Unfortunately, Randy was very difficult to pass as usual. I couldn’t get next to him in any of the brake zones because the Audi makes good power, but I could catch up to him in the long right hand carousel because of the Porsche’s excellent handling. The problem was that the carousel was followed by the turn known as the kink, which has a minimum speed of well over 100 mph and is not generally known as a great place to pass.
About six laps into the race I could tell that Randy’s Audi was getting to be a handful and he got a little bit sideways exiting the carousel, which was my opportunity. I almost pulled up next to him at the exit of the corner, but I didn’t quite make it and he started to move over. I stayed in the gas and moved right as far as I could until I was out of asphalt and Randy left me a little room heading into the kink. I dove inside as we entered the corner and changed down to fourth gear, as all this activity had killed my momentum, and managed to slip through before heading down the long straight to Canada corner.
I thought that the pass would really work to my advantage because I expected Randy to shut the door on the parade of BMWs behind him, which might have given me a chance to break away from the field. Much to my disappointment, Bill Auberlen also managed to slip by into second position. Randy held off the charge of the other two BMWs and it turned into a two car race for the lead. I had about a 1.5 second gap back to Auberlen for much of the rest of the race, which didn’t seem to change much from lap to lap, save for traffic situations.
Finally, with about five or six laps remaining there was a bad crash on the straight heading down toward turn five. My former teammate Michael Culver’s car was badly damaged and sitting in the middle of the straightaway. Fortunately, Michael was okay, but it took a few laps to clear the car from the track.
When we went back to green flag racing there were three laps to go, but on the second lap there was a horrendous crash at the bridge at the entry to the carousel. I don’t know exactly what happen because it all occurred behind me, but when I came back around under full course caution there were five crashed cars either in the road or just off to the side, include the Corvette of my teammate Phil McClure. Apparently, Phil took a pretty hard hit (I suspect into the bridge abutment) because I could see them cutting him out of the Corvette. He was taken to the hospital and the last I heard he had a concussion, but no other injuries. I ended up completing the last lap and a half behind the pace car and taking the checkered flag under full course caution for the win.
The accident was doubly unfortunate because Phil had worked his way into second position, which would have been a terrific result for the 3R Racing team. My other teammates Victor Contreras and Tim Wiens finished fifth and eighth, respectively. In spite of the good result it was kind of a somber victory celebration while we awaited news of Phil’s condition. I’m just glad that he’ll be okay.
