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Mid Ohio

ConAgra Foods

10/06/2001

Event Preview

Summer Stirrings

While the attention of the sports car world turns mostly towards western France, there is at hand the Mid-Ohio round of the Grand-Am championship. Last year’s race featured a thrilling multi-car scrap from which the Baldwin / Robinson Riley & Scott-Judd emerged victorious. The Texas based team will return to Ohio with their repaired Mk III C chassis that had been crashed by the team owner at Watkins Glen (below).

The bucolic Midwestern setting usually hosts a sizable field and this is again the case. Besides the return of the Mk III C, the other change in the top class is that former Champion Audi driver Dorsey Schroeder will take the place Andy Wallace in the no. 20 Dyson entry. The no. 16 line-up remains the usual, which means that Butch Leitzinger will make a dash to the airport for a flight to Paris right after the American event. The remainder of the SRP entry includes the usual Grand-Am suspects, including the TRV team Riley & Scott-Chevrolet which typically does not contest each round.

SRPII has a welcome addition, the Multimatic Lola-Nissan of Scott Maxwell. This is the same car that won the inaugural showing of LMP 675 class at Le Mans last year. It should provide a significant challenge to the four regulars in the class, the 2 by 2 Lolas of the Archangel and Porsche Haus teams.

Besides the Fordahl Motorsports / Park Place Motors Saleen and the Schumacher Porsche GT1, the GTS class will also include the Oreca built Viper which won the class at Phoenix. GT not only has the largest entry, but it should also be the scene of the hottest battles. The 5-liter V-8 BMW is fresh from its win at the Connecticut Sea Regatta, aka the Slimey Rock Grand-Am round. It will be chased here by at least five eminently qualified water-cooled Porsches, two each from G & W and Orbit, plus the Pobst / Hiskey car. Mid-Ohio always seems to bring out and oddity and this year’s is a GTU class Mazda Miata MX-5. It’s actually a Mandeville built tubeframe into which owner Ron Tambourine has placed not the usual Miata piston motor, but an RX-7 rotary.

The AGT entry has swelled with three new cars. These include the Ron Fariss Oldsmobile and Dick Greer Corvette, both of which practiced at earlier rounds but have yet to make the start. Sometime Trans-Am runner, Tim Cowen of nearby Ashland, Ohio, has brought a Weaver built Mustang. Co-driving will be Tony Ave, a regular driver of open wheelers.

Poor weather has plagued the last three rounds of the Grand-Am season. Hopefully that streak will end as the series now continues to be hosted at the better true road courses. Mid-Ohio offers some best spectator viewing at any sports car venue and should include a reasonable sized crowd.

Janos Wimpffen.

(Andy Hartwell will be covering the event)