Well you all should recognize the pace car and the pole sitter for Fridays practise race at Watkins Glen, Ernie let me out of the cold and wet pits to take this picture of the Cayman GTR and MantisSport Cayman S heading out of corner 10.
We had a pretty good weekend, but it was a lot of work. The car was great in the rain on Friday, dominent in fact as you can tell by our postion.
We qualified on a drying track on Saturday and did well on the wets (1st in class and 4th overall, splitting the GT-4 class). we changed to dry's for the race, Ernie didn't get a good start and we ended up 4th in class. After checking the car we found the left rear tire was down (12lbs). Not good and Ernie was lucky to keep the car on the pavement for 12 laps. (The flat tire explained why the car handled like a pig).
On Sunday we ran a 90 minute Enduro. From our 4th place in class grid we were soon well behind the lead pack in dry conditions (We were one of the slowest classes in the race). The car was understeering badly in two corners, corner #1 was one of them and this corner sets up the up hill run to the bus stop so we were losing a little time on the field all the way up the hill (Ernie said he was only getting to 145mph before braking for the bus stop).
We pitted late in the race, a full course caution allowed us to save fuel, and Ernie was very fast on lower fuel load. After putting 30 litres of fuel in he went back to work and caught the class leader, this was a great race! Ernie was closing in certain areas and losing in others for about ten laps, I was waiting for them to appear on the front straight and praying the yellow car was in front of the white 911. On the last lap Ernie tried to set up a drag to the finish by getting a run inside him in the second last corner, Bill Martin, driving the white 911, held on and we finished behind him. There is a good rivalry beginning between Ernie and Bill, they are both very good drivers.
So woulda, shoulda coulda time. IF we didn't have the flat tire in Saturday's race we would have started Sunday's in a much better grid postion. (Sundays race was grided on Saturday's times). IF we hadn't put so much fuel in (we finished with 3/8 of a tank) could Ernie have had the speed to successfully set up that finish. That's racing folks, and we had a good one at Watkins Glen.
We now have six weeks off to tend to business and prepare the car for our home race at Mosport July 28, 29 & 30. Come on Caymanites, make the trip to Mosport. We will give you a race to remember.
Stan
Edited by - MantisSport on 06/12/2006 09:04:56 AM
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