Welcome to the 2009 Ford Racing Mustang Challenge season opener!!
We were fortunate enough to get the season rolling near beautiful Miami, FL. The weather was 80 degrees and mostly sunny with a lovely breeze (far better than that of ~40 degrees and blustery in my home state of Washington).
We get the weekend rolling Thursday morning with the promoter test day. I had a pretty good idea of the layout, as I had been practicing on iRacing . The test sessions went smoothly and I started getting a feel for the #9 TC Motorsports FR500S on the track. Homestead is a track with lots of straight-aways connected by sharp turns, so the corner exit speed is critical.
Friday morning brings official Ford Racing Mustang Challenge practice. At this point I've had about an hour's worth of laps on the track, so I'm getting pretty familiar with the facility. In the morning practice session we put on new tires to see what the car would feel like and it was gooooood. I ran the quickest time of the session and the weekend at that point at a 1:38.849. It felt really good to be atop the charts (even though it was just practice). In the afternoon practice session, I ran 5th, as we were testing some things out, and adjusting the setup (we made a change and it transformed the car!).
Our final session for Friday was qualifying (for Saturday's race). I go out, leaving myself plenty of room to run a flyer and my times just aren't what I'm expecting (best lap was a 1:39.522). I do three laps (all feel like they should be fast, but just aren't), and park it. I'm left with 8th position on the grid (what the heck!?!?). It turns out the engine had a small problem, and I was down about 20 horsepower!
Unfortunately the problem was a slippery one, and wasn't exactly straightforward to fix. This meant that although the crew had replaced some parts and done testing, I was left with the problem for Saturday's race. I had a great start and moved my way up to 5th briefly, then fell back to 6th after turn 3. A couple of straighaways later I was back to 9th, then 10th (man this is frustrating!). We got a caution when three cars got together in T10, and I thought it might be an opportunity to get some positions back, but it was not to be. At one point I was down to 2nd to last! It's really easy to let that kind of situation affect your confidence, so I just put my head down and tried to gain back as many positions as I could. By the end of the race I had worked my way back to 12th place (out of 18 cars), which wasn't too bad.
The TC boys really dug into the car to find the issue, and had it figured out by early Saturday evening. Woohoo! I got full power back for Sunday morning practice. I only ran a handful of laps, because qualifying for race #2 was directly after practice. The guys put on some new BF Goodrich g-force R1's, and I lined up for qualifying. I gave myself plenty of room and got a flyer in on my first lap. One of my favorite moments of the weekend was Clint (my crewman for the weekend) calling to me after the first lap, "Nice lap, that just put you into P1." I had got the pole! The only trick was holding onto it...
Fortunately for me, no one else ran faster, so I retained my pole position!!! For the race, my main concerns were:
1) Maintain the lead through the first few corners.
2) Be kind to my tires.
3) Make as few mistakes as possible.
I figured if I could do that, I'd have a good shot at the win.
Well, I wish I could tell you a grand story about how Andrew (Caddell) and I went back and forth and fought it out, but I can't. I put a gap on him on the first lap, and managed to keep it fairly steady throughout the whole 45 minutes. He was always lurking in the background, so it wasn't easy by any means, but he never got quite close enough to make a pass. I ran a fast, consistent pace and I accomplished all of my goals, which resulted in a race victory!!
Another cool note, Pro racer (and someone I really look up to) Andy Lally was asked to drive the #00 "Media Car" for the second race, and he did a great job, finishing 4th (pretty impressive for so little time in the car!). How cool is that? Getting to race against a pro like him was a very cool experience, and made me feel really good about my performance.
