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Archive for July, 2010
Northeast Grand Prix – Pre Race
Jul 21st
// Chase Navarre //
The American LeMans Northeast Grand Prix will be at 2:05pm on Saturday, July 24th at Lime Rock Park in Lakeville, CT.
Salt Lake Team points total was 10 (total 49), and we are still 3rd, with Alex Job getting 3 and still in first place (71 total points) and TRG getting 16 (total 55) and now in second place.
Velox Motorsport had an amazing nail-biting qualifying effort by Shane Lewis in Tooele, Utah to start the very hot but very scenic Larry H.Miller Grand Prix in a promising 4th place position. Jerry Vento started out for the team and had a rough first lap which left him in the rear of the field, but he firmly and aggressively worked his way back up the field, dodging early accidents by GTC competitors, to turn the car over to Shane at the one hour mark solidly in 5th place.
Shane dealt with the grueling heat for almost 2 hours without a working cool suit to bring the car home in 5th place, on the lead lap with the other GTC cars. A post-race rules infraction of a competitor put Velox into 4th place in the final race standings and allowed the team to maintain third place in the championship heading into Connecticut's self-proclaimed "bull ring", the 1.52 mile long Lime Rock Park.
Utah – Race Report
Jul 12th
//Report received from Jerry Vento - Team Owner and Driver//
We had clean race, finishing 4th in a very competitive field under challenging circumstances. Behind the scenes we dealt with heat, crashes, car handling issues and on and on------------hey what's new that's racing.
Our team worked hard to optimize the car platform and set-up for the smooth course at Miller with sweeping fast turns in 2,3, 4 and 7.
Miller's location in a desert bowl makes for interesting course condition changes. Think of driving through a sand storm with a good dose of sand often coating parts of the track. When a car goes off track or crashes and you are following, its like driving in complete brownish darkness until you make it out to the clearing. Hold your breath and keep your foot down.
Throughout the race, we struggled with strong under-steer, a two car collision in turn 6 that caused a full course yellow early in the race. While we were a car length behind the crash, we avoided the pile-up steering clear of the mess.
About 55 minutes into the race, we took advantage of a full course yellow to pit for a driver change, tires and fuel. The strategy of waiting for a full course yellow, even though we were low on fuel remaining, paid off and set us up to quickly advance after the pit stop.
Heat played a contributing role in the race. The ambient outside temperature was 104 degrees. The outside and car temperatures and the strain from our cooling gear causes a dangerously low voltage problem. With over an hour left in the race we were forced to shut down the cool suit, fan and lights. It was truly "Shake and Bake" time.
We finished the race without a scratch after a grueling two hours and forty-five minute race and our 4th place finish will be great for points.
Looking forward to Lime Rock in two weeks.
