Luck was not on our side this weekend at limerock park. Despite having the fastest cars in both the ST and GS fields come the races mechanicals took us out of contention for a good finish. My co-driver Dan and I worked well together and were both very fast in both the Maxwell Paper Racing Porsche Boxster and their 997 GS car. In the Boxster I started the race forth and quickly moved up to third. I had a good long battle up front then about an 1hr 15min into the race i pitted from 2nd place to hand the car over to Dan. However, after re-fueling the car the motor did not want to start which ultimately led to us getting lapped while in the pits and thus taking the Boxster out of contention for a top 10 finish.
In GS I had to start from dead last (out of 35 cars) due to a mechanical issue in the short qualifying session. I was not worried as I knew we had a very fast car and have come thru the field before. After 25 laps I had the car up to forth and then just conserved the car and saved gas. However, to get around a lapped car I went down to a lower gear in the uphill. If you have been to limerock park you know the uphill as the jump as the cars get air as they crest the top of the hill. Lap after lap at the top of the hill the rear wheels rev up as the car gets light (or gets air) and upon landing you regain traction. However, when passing a lapped car I used a lower gear which means the motor would be at higher RPM and making more power and this time upon landing from the jump I heard the teeth from 3rd gear get shaved off of the gear as the stress on the drive-train from the landing was too much. Thus I was forced to use only gears 1,2,4,5,6 and not third which did not hurt us all too bad due to the limerock park layout. I managed some decent times without third and then pitted to hand the car over the Dan. Dan continued to lay down extremely fast lap times given that the car was not 100%. However, a vibration developed during both my stint and continued into his. This vibration was the result of broken wheel studs on the left rear wheel. The Grand-Am officials are very strict about this issue and can deem the car unsafe to be on track. When Dan pitted for tires we and the Grand-Am officials realized just how bad the problem was as only 1 of 5 wheel studs was left. We were forced to park the car and end the race early.
Although we as a team are frustrated how the race ended up, we were pleased with the performance from the cars. The team is doing a great job working on the cars when not at the track and continue to make them faster.
Stay posted for more news.
-scott