Porsche Club of America Mid Ohio Club Race

Spring at the Carousel

May 14-15 2005

This was my second race at this track, having won D class last year in my '73RS. The Cup car was in good shape again and I looked forward to driving it on this very technical track. I flew in Friday afternoon as I did not think I needed the extra Friday practice day. When I arrived everything was set up and some of our guys were practicing. Spencer Cox was out instructing for Russell Smith and they had an incident in the fast lefthander before the carousel, hitting the tire wall with the right side of his freshly painted, repaired car.

They quickly pulled the damaged fender off and started working on it to get it ready for the race. They found a local body shop who would repair it nicely before the IMSA GT3 cup race the following week, but for now it was just made good enough to make it through tech for the PCA race. Russell and Spencer were fine, but it looked like a GT3 junkyard in our paddock.

Saturday morning it was wet so we went out on rain tires and I drove very cautiously, near the back of the pack. The second practice was not much better but I started using more speed on the straights and finished up mid pack. It finally started to clear up mid day so we putour dry tires on, but then it started raining a bit... so most of us put the rains back on, except Scott Lyman who kept his slicks. Sure enough, it stopped raining as we went out onto the track, and though I started out pretty fast the tires were getting beat up so I took it easy and came in after five laps. Scott was nearly 4 seconds faster on the slicks and was 6th fastest of the 29 cars while I was still mid pack. I don't remember the details of the fun race but it must not have been very fun, I did not complete all the laps. It must have been quite wet as the lap times were really slow.

Here is the new side of my car before we put the IMSA sticker back on the door. Roger did a great job of changing the 46 into 48!

Sunday morning we had a warmup then qualifying at 10am. Qualifying was dry and I ended up 5th out of 18 (!) GT3 cup cars in GTC3 (13th out of 45 cars in the group), Behind Chris Cervelli who was much faster than anyone else with a 1:31.8 (with chicane!), and my GT3 cup competitors Tom Pank, Paul Orwicz, and Keith Alexander. I got a 1:33.9 with Scott Lyman just behind me and Russell another second back. There were also a bunch of powerful GT1R, GT2R, and GTA cars mixed in with us which would make the race tough... they can pass us on the straights but we can't get back around them in the turns.

In the race, I was doing OK but missed a shift in the keyhole, the 2-3 shift. I missed it again and it allowed Scott to blow right by me. I had some battles with a GTA car (GT3RS) who was slower than me but too fast on the straights so he held me up for several laps, so I could not catch up to Scott. Several fast cars (turbos like Bill Chadwick and Norm Goldrich) dropped out of the race so I moved up to 11th overall but back to 6th in class behind Scott. Chris Cervelli and Tom Pank ended up with a strong 2-3 finish while Keith and Paul had tough battles trying to pass Bill's 935 before his car finally gave out.

After the group 2 and 3 sprint races, we had a one-hour enduro race. But I had a flight to catch and it was running late... I needed to leave about 4:00 but the race was a half hour late and did not start until about then. So my mindset was poor, but I wanted to at least start it and do some racing, then finish early. I missed some shifts and was driving poorly, just stayed out seven laps to make sure the car was OK after the mis-shifts. Then I jumped in the 'stang and headed to the airport. Scott drove well, with no co-driver (Keith got help from Wolf Henzler and Paul from David Murray, not bad!). Scott was very lucky in coming into the pits just at the right time due to a yellow flag, and gaining about a lap on most people. He ended up 1st or 2nd overall, definately 1st in GT3C. Yet another enduro I did not finish, at least I started it (running about 50% that I start the ones I pay for, and 0% finishing).

I did OK in the sprint, but thought I needed to go a lot faster for the IMSA race. I was not pushing it hard enough coming out of the carousel or the keyhole and my lines in "madness" were not very good...

Driving back in the 'Stang I called Andy and Laurie Sanborn who had left due to mechanical problems. Andy told me to get back to the track and run the Monday practice session!

That was an excellent idea, Farnbacher-Loles had the track rented out and I needed all the practice I could get. At the left is Shawn Price, he flew in to get some practice and I showed him the line for several laps. Click on it for a larger version. Wolf would be able to help check out the car too and we could run without the chicane, as IMSA would run. Wolf got a great lap time in my car on his first flying lap, I guess it was ok! I ran consistent low 1:31s in practice but some of the others were going much faster... But I was glad to get in a good half day of practice.

Less than a week would be the IMSA race, my car needed some alignment help as the rear end would just not stay planted.

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