Well, we're back and ready to go for Round #6 of the Miller Cup! Round #5 was a fiasco, but we pulled through.
Race #6 brings us to Millville, New Jersey and New Jersey Motorsports Park. This is a brand-new facility built just for what we love to do: RACE!
New Jersey poses an interesting circuit that requires two different types of race car. On the first half of the circuit you need a car that handles well in fast, open corners. On the back half, you need a car that takes tight, technical bends well and puts the power down as early as possible. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to get a single car to do both of these things. Another challenge that presents itself in NJ is that the track is brand new to everyone. So while we are trying to set the car up, we're trying to learn the track at the same time.
This particular weekend is in stark contrast to Lime Rock. We have four days of track time, plenty to learn the course, our flights landed as scheduled and no baggage was lost, and we all came into the weekend well rested and ready to race!
The early parts of the weekend went off without a hitch. New Jersey's facility was nice, but it was incomplete. The area where we were to paddock was basically a dirt lot, so we found some indoor/outdoor carpet in town and made the best we could. Thursday was scheduled to be a test day where we would learn the track, make setup changes and all in all gather our bearings.
We were first out at 8:30AM, so it was an early morning! The first session went well and I learned the track quickly. Unfortunately for all parties involved, Scott Pruett had an incident late in the morning in his Daytona Prototype that left the pit-lane wall and his race car in pieces(see below)! This also meant that the incident would have to be investigated by the NJ State Patrol, so the track was closed for the rest of the day.
After taking the rest of Thursday off, we began anew Friday with practice. We started playing with different car setups, which left me with a car that was faster (good thing), but it also had some pretty bad understeer (bad thing). I ran fairly well in practice, and ended the day in the top 10, not too bad!
Saturday brought a single session for the Ford Racing Mustang Challenge competitors: Qualifying. Qualifying in a series as tight as this one is difficult. Your car has to be good, and you have to find an open spot within the first few laps, or your tires are past their peak. I've always been great at turning fast laps consistently for a whole race, however, going out and cracking off the fastest lap the car is capable of on your first hot lap is something I've never had to do. Well, no time to learn like the present!
TC Motorsports provided me with a great car, so it was up to me to do the rest. I went out and got held up on my first two laps, so I ran a few more and managed to get a clean lap, but it wasn't quite perfect. It was still a respectable time at a 1:29.507, good for 6th place on the grid; the thing is, if I would've gotten off ONE corner a touch faster and been able to drop my time by .048 (that's forty-eight thousandths of a second!!), I would've taken third!! Sometimes it's painful, I know. But that's why I love this series, the competition is so close!!
Sunday is race day, and our team had all qualified well. Carlo took 2nd with a great effort, just .161 off the pole, and Rick was just behind me in 7th. All three TC Motorsports cars in the top 10! I had a good start and maintained my position as well as staying in touch with the front-runners. As I go through Turn 5, I get the call on the radio that someone wrecked coming out of T3 and we had a full course caution. We circulated the track a couple times, then they brought the whole field into the pits while they cleaned up the crash and repaired the tire wall. Unfortunately, they kept the clock running while we were sitting, so our green race time was all of 17 minutes. It's OK though, not every racing facility has all the bugs worked out for their first event, I'm sure when we return in 2009 NJMP will be much better. After the restart, I briefly took 5th position, only to be knocked off the track in the following turn and once again found myself in 6th. The incident was enough to knock my steering off a bit and left me with a car that was not optimal. I persisted through the rest of the race, losing two spots coming out of T5 when I got a poor run out, and finished a disappointing 8th.
The team had an excellent weekend, but we all finished down one or two spots from where we started, which is always disappointing for a racer. Carlo scored a podium in third place, I took 8th, and Rick stuck right with me for 9th. Yet again TC Motorsports occupies three of the top ten spots! Perhaps the finishes weren't so bad?! I learned a lot (again), improved my driving, qualifying, and racing skills, and had a helluva lot of fun! See you in Utah for the finale!
