Facebook Page
Twitter Updates
Home » Blog » Allan's Blog » Not such a bad weekend afterall...
03 September 2007 | Posted in Allan's Blog
Having visited the Detroit track a month or so ago, I knew our race this weekend would be tough. The concrete surface was very bumpy and many of the corners were pretty slow second or third gear ones – and first gear at times come to that – and that was never going to be the ideal scenario for an LM P1 car. And that’s irrelevant as to whether it’s a petrol or diesel engined LM P1 car. 925kg is a heavy weight to try to manoeuvre around – a bit like trying to ride a bike in your living room – basically a difficult situation and one I’d not recommend you try at home!
We struggled a little in practice, not to get a balance so much, but just to get a feel for the car and to be competitive. In qualifying I was shocked, but guess I shouldn’t have been, in terms of the time difference between the Audis on the fourth row and the pole-winning LM P2 Porsche which was very close to two seconds. Marco and I both got the maximum from our cars because we were both within the same tenth of a second to line-up seventh and eighth – our problem being that there were six cars ahead of us.
I made a good stat and was third pretty quickly – more by others scrapping amongst themselves and me taking advantage of that. The pole-starting Porsche of Ryan Briscoe had an off and I managed to get into second when the yellow flag period came out which neutralized everything. But the way the pit-stops panned out, it put me into an effective lead – something I could not ever have believed if you’d said that to me on Friday morning after the first practice – there was just no way I thought we could lead this race in any circumstances.
I was able to hold the lead until the second of the yellows when I pitted to Dindo with almost 1.5hrs on the clock. Unfortunately we had a problem with a wheel nut at the pit-stop which dropped him into the pack behind the pace car. He was then unlucky at the restart when the leading Porsche was a little slow away at the green flag and Dindo found himself boxed in behind Chris Dyson while Emanuele in the ‘sister’ Audi, who had exited the pits immediately behind Dindo in fourth, came passed the three of them and into the lead.
Dindo got by Dyson with about 15mins to run after a helluva scrap which saw the two of them swapping places on the same lap while Emanuele unfortunately got jumped by Romain Dumas in the Porsche with four minutes to run.
So all in all, second and third overall is much better than we’d imagined. From Dindo and my point of view, there was a big element of this race where we were thinking more about the championship than necessarily of race victories. But when one comes and it comes in front of you, then you do take it. However the wheel nut issue did cost us quite a lot as it transpired but I don’t think it was such a bad weekend.
We proved that we could be pretty competitive and be racers in every circumstance so we now turn our attention to Petit Le Mans with extra enthusiasm. Having been away since Mosport, I’m now looking forward to flying home and spending some quality time with Kelly and Finlay before coming back out to Atlanta.
Add to Digg 
Save in De.li.cious
No comments to display - be the first to comment »