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Mid Ohio

ConAgra Foods

10/06/2001

Saturday

At Mid-Ohio

Multimatic Lola

The Canadians are well represented here at Mid Ohio with the Porschehaus Lola duo of Robert Julien and Bruno St. Jacques. And now the Multimatic Motorsports team from Toronto, Canada is joining in this North American championship, running their Le Mans winning Lola in SRPII. The team is a welcome addition in light of the loss of the Team Spencer Kudzu-Mazda. The SRPII class is now a Lola-only series and this should allow for some real comparisons of engineering ability and driving skill.

Larry Holt is the Vice President of Engineering for Multimatic and he relays the story behind his teams being at this race. “This is the car we won at Le Mans with last year. We have had it put away, just sitting in the shop. We have been running a Grand Am cup car for customers and mainstream business has been keeping us busy so we really haven’t had a chance to come out. But I have been talking to Dave Watson (GA’s Director Of Competition) a lot and they got a pretty thin SRP grid and, since we are big supporters of Grand Am, we came out to try and fill his grid and try to have a bit of fun.”

Holt tells of the Le Mans victory – a defeat of fatigue and mechanical woes. “We won because, really, everybody in the class had technical problems, everybody, including us. I guess we just did a better job of solving them. It wasn’t a 24-hour race it was a bout an 18-hour race with a 4 hour mechanics festival in the middle of it. We got about 5 laps up on the Peugeots and we held that for 14 hours. They chased us. I mean they were only four or five laps down at the end but we were the only cars to finish.”

The team plans to run the rest of the GA season. “We made a commitment to Grand Am to come out. I would like to put David Empringham in with Scott Maxwell to see what this thing can do.”

There are no plans to run in the ALMS. “We won’t be at the Petit Le Mans. We are staunch supporters of the Grand Am. I don’t have anything against the ALMS but to be honest with you, this is more our style of racing. It’s laid back, I have more customers here. The guys running the series are cooler guys. I can go over here and borrow a part...I don’t find that in the ALMS.

“The ALMS thing is too hassled up. It is almost like Formula 1. I mean, they can do that but as a privateer, there is no way I can compete against factory teams there is just no way. It’s impossible.”

This weekend, Scott Maxwell and Peter Czapka are driving the car. They qualified the car third behind the Andy Lally / Paul Macey Archangel Motorsports Lola and the Porschehaus Racing Lola of St. Jacques / Julien. Once again the sister Porschehaus Lola #88 will not start, as both drivers are not at the circuit. The second Archangel car, #22 driven by Mike Durand and Jeff Clinton, picked up the last grid spot in the class.

Lally managed to squeeze about an extra mile per hour out of his car to secure the pole over St. Jacques. Lally ran a 1:19.953 to St. Jacques 1:20.826.

American Viper Racing

Tom Weickardt heads up the normally two-car American Viper Racing effort. This weekend, he has just one of the cars here. His first goal is to learn more about the track before he comes back with both cars to run the upcoming ALMS race here. The team plans to run the balance of the ALMS season.

The second reason they are here is to fulfill a promise Weickardt made to his chief engineer, Gene Martindale. “Gene is a wannabe racer and I promised him I would get him some time in this car so, we are here and he is racing.”

Weickardt on running the ALMS. “We went to ALMS at the Petit and we had absolutely no clue what it took to run there. We only had a week to put the thing together and so what can you expect? That’s our excuse and we are sticking to it!”

“We liked the environment with the best drivers in the world and the international flavor. The problem is it is a very high competitive level of racing and it is hard to get close to them. We have some things we can do to our cars and we will probably do that at the end of the season and see where we can go from there.”

In Friday’s practice session, Terry Borcheller took the car out for shakedown run and came into the pits to relay some of his experience and knowledge to this still young operation.

During today’s practice at least one driver was glad to be here. Robert Julien is here for the first time and he says this is now his favorite track. “This place is awesome. It is not too fast, but the blind corners and the ups and downs are fabulous! Wonderful place!”

Saturday Qualifying

SRP

In SRP, to no one’s surprise James Weaver qualified on pole with the #16 Dyson Racing Riley & Scott MKIII. Jon Field, in the Intersport Lola-Judd #37 came in just about a hundredth of a second behind to pick up the next spot. Didier Theys brought the Ferrari-Judd in third. Elliot Forbes-Robinson drove the #20 sister Dyson to fourth, just barely nipping the Jack Baldwin 74 Ranch Robinson Racing MKIII by a margin of .003.

The top 5 qualifiers were only separated by a total of 1.2 seconds.
Jack Baldwin talked about his qualifying effort and the new R&S MKIIIC that the team again elected not to race with. “Qualifying went well. I think we ran what we expected to run. The good news is this is a real good racecar. Are we fast enough for the competition? No. The car is a great car but it doesn’t have a sequential flat-shift gearbox or the good brakes. But it sure does handle well and I think all in all it is going to be a great car for us tomorrow. With this pack of cars, we are right where we should be.”

Baldwin sees a lot to like in the tried and true Doran-Lista Ferrari. “The car has all the right stuff. It is a great team that runs the car. They have the brakes and the shift. We know we are giving up a second a lap to the shift alone and another ½ second to the brakes. We have this car just about fully developed now and there is just not a whole lot left to do. The competition has advanced and that is why we have the new car.

“We think the MKIIIC is a nice car. It has the things we want it to have but, being a new car it has some issues we need to work out”. Bill and Bob Riley are in the paddock this weekend providing support to the team in an effort to debug their creation. Baldwin: “We need to spend some time with the new car. We brought it to Watkins Glen and it got wrecked. We didn’t get any drive time. We didn’t learn anything at Watkins Glen except that we had a throttle problem.

“We brought the car here on test day and we still had a throttle problem so we didn’t get any test time with it here either. Bill and Bob Riley are working with us and trying to resolve some of the issues. We are going to get some things changed and then take it out again for testing and sorting. We are half way through the season and the car is simply not ready to go out and kick butt. We have five races left and we are not going to beat the #16 car (Dyson) so we are going to invest our time and efforts into getting the car ready for next season.

“At some point this season, maybe Daytona, we could bring it out again. We discussed running two cars but we are against it. We have taken the old car off the market and we are going to continue to run it.

“Rob Dyson is going to do the same thing we are and take their new car to a lot of testing. We are going to work to help each other with baseline information to save some money and get the car sorted out. Compared to the Reynard, this car is a far better car out of the box. The issues were way bigger then than what we could deal with, like the car breaking in half.

“We are also looking at our engine programs and what options are out there. There are even rumors out there that Ferrari might be coming back with a new chassis.

Young Clint Field and his Uncle Joel Field are crossing their fingers that a new engine can get here in time for tomorrow’s race. The engine is coming in from Texas to replace the motor that simply went away in practice. Clint Field had looked to be driving well off the pace in early practice but that was by choice as he was seating new gears. When ready to go at it in earnest, however, the engine gave up.

Jon Field, in the Intersport Lola-Judd #37, thought he could have taken the top spot if it hadn’t been for a miscalculation that found him out of gas on his fast lap. He lost a ½ second in switching over to his reserve tank. “We kind of killed ourselves. We had a much faster lap going. It will be a close race tomorrow. James really hung it out but I didn’t feel I was driving it that hard.

“I think we took a pole away from ourselves but it really doesn’t matter. It is just for bragging rights.”

SRPII

Andy Lally, in the #21 Archangel Motorsports Lola-Nissan, took pole with a time just over a second faster than Bruno St. Jacques, in the #89 Porschehaus Lola-Nissan. St. Jacques was very complimentary to Lally. “He is incredibly fast. We will have to find something somewhere but we will!”

Lally’s teammate, Paul Macey commented on his co-drivers record-setting performance: “Andy set a new track record and broke the 1:20 mark with a 1:19, securing the pole for us. He had a great run out there!”

Macey sees the key to winning in his class to be who best negotiates their way through traffic. “You get caught behind some of the slower cars in the esses and you are there until you can get down to the carousel. You can lose a lot of time here.”

“Let’s hope everyone is keeping an eye on their mirrors!”

To these eyes, the Multimatic car is simply elegant in appearance. The sleek silver paint seems to set off the bright red Canadian flag the team proudly displays on the front of the car. It is good to have them here as this class could be home to some of the best racing outside of GT.

Macey agrees the class should have more cars running. “We had 11 cars at Daytona and it was a great race. There is no reason why we shouldn’t have 6 or 8 cars out here. And the cars are running so close in times. Lime Rock was a great example of how entertaining this can be. 10 or 12 of these cars running around could be as exciting as a Formula Atlantic race.”

“And I am glad we are back to the longer races as you have more strategy involved.”

GTS

The Bingham/Johnson Saleen S7R has the pole in class, having run a lap just under a second faster than the Larry Schumacher / Martin Snow Porsche GT1. Third in the order is the Jeff Altenburg / Rich Marziale Muzzy Racing Viper that Altenburg qualified at about 2 miles per hour behind the Saleen.

The Muzzy Viper is owned by Rich Marziale, a man who can tell you all about cutting up concrete structures and hauling them away. The car was purchased from Hugh Chamberlain and Marziale filled in the history of the car. “The car has won at Phoenix for us. In the FIA GT it won Barcelona, Portugal and Madrid. It took 5th in the 1997 Le Mans and there is even a die-cast version of the car as #94 Team Oreca at Daytona in ’97.”

The name of the team is Muzzy Racing and the origins of the name are in the family. “Muzzy is my grandfathers fathers nickname. I just incorporated it into our race team. The name has been in the family for about 25o years. Our team has been together for three years. We raced in the Viper Racing League with this car and two other production Vipers and then moved over to Grand Am.

“David Boshman is with us and he is one of the original Chrysler Engineers. He actually built the first Viper racecar. He did all the aero work and we are fortunate to have him along with us. We have other talented people on the crew with lots of Viper racing experience.”

Marziale said the chassis he is running is no longer recognized as eligible for competition in the ALMS. “Chrysler didn’t want to pay the cost of homologation. They scratched it and went along with the new chassis.”

Larry Schumacher still loves running his Porsche GT1. “We should have been here for test day on Tuesday. We are running a little behind on the curve but there are a few more things we can do in this next practice session. Driving in traffic is not the same as having the road to yourself so maybe we can find that second and a half back during the race.

“You know, I keep saying the car is a little big for this track and a little big for the next track but, I think by the time we get to Road America we will have the right size car!”

GT

Randy Pobst always looks forward to racing anywhere. “I love Mid Ohio! I won from the pole the first four times I ever raced here. I never really felt more together with a car than I feel with this Porsche. The car is back to better than normal (since it crashed at Watkins Glen). I think it needed a good knock on its head.”

Kim Hiskey was taken out by a prototype that had a tire go flat. Pobst suggests her sacrifice may have saved the other driver’s life. “When that prototype broke…if it hadn’t hit Kim first I don’t want to think about what would have happened. It was a nasty crash.”

When it was suggested the team put a Red Cross insignia on the car Pobst commented: “Yeah. Kim saved a life and the crew saved the car and brought it back to life!”

And Pobst administered his own form of first aid by setting fastest time in qualifying. Co-driver Hiskey is looking forward to the race. “This is my favorite track. Randy really likes the car and we are set for tomorrow.”

The #66 Racer’s Group Porsche GT3RS was placed second when Kevin Buckler finished up about a second behind Pobst’s time. Third in class went to the #61 Case It Racing Porsche of David Murry, Lynn Wilson and Adam Merzon.

Spencer Pumpelly yielded the wheel to his co-driver Steve Ivankovich who said he just wasn’t pushing it during the session. “I saw a lot of guys getting wild out there. I figured the track is a little greasy so I brought it down to about 80%. A few more laps and I might have got it down a few more seconds but we ran out of time.

“We qualified towards the back but that is fine. I really don’t think anyone is going to catch Pobst honestly, if he stays clean. Judging by what all the cars have been doing in practice, I think a bold move at the start will just create trouble so we will just watch everyone else in front of us get in trouble before we start running our laps.

“To tell you the truth, I didn’t want to embarrass the team. Don’t finish last, don’t crash the car!”

AGT

The #84 Comer Racing Corvette of Andy McNeil, Kyle McIntire and Jack Wilkes claimed the pole with a time of 1:24.731. Next up was the Cowen Racing Mustang of Tim Cowen and Tony Ave. The team is from the area and Cowen recounted his experience. “The track is a little greasier now than it was this morning and we were getting loose on the back end. We were satisfied with the run. I think we have a good combination and we are from this area and we spend a lot of time here.”

The next few cars in the order in AGT are the #09 Goad/Conway Team X-1R Corvette, followed by the #11 Bupp/Leavy Hamilton Safe Motorsports Camaro and the #82 Greer/Fergus Dick Greer Racing – Wendy’s Corvette. The 09 car ran with a new engine as the old one expired during morning practice. Team owner Todd Flis commented that, “The engine had some quirks to it yesterday during testing and we contemplated going ahead and putting the back up engine in it last night, but decided not to. I guess the decision bit us this morning.”