My Return to the Long Beach Grand Prix

Man, what an amazing event!  I've raced just once before at Long Beach - 2001 in the CART Toyota Atlantic Championship.  That was my very first Atlantic race, and what a race it was.  I was blown away by the sheer magnitude of the event back then - the fans, the energy, the course - it was magical for a young driver like me.  NINE years later, I'm back and I'm driving a Ferrari.  Not a bad return to the beach!

We really didn't have much track time while we were there, but boy did we stay busy during the two days.  My teammate Ed Brown had never been there before, so my top priority was to quickly make sure the car was drivable and relatively competative, and then get Ed the majority of the seat time to learn the course and get up to speed.  He did a great job!

After the sessions it was all about data analysis, video analysis, track & car reports, debriefs with the engineers and coming up with our plans of attack.  Add a few appearances for the 400+ friends and guests of Patron Tequila, some autograph sessions and some interviews - we were some busy boys!

I got to qualify the car, which was a blast... There's nothing I like better than qualifying, when the car is low on fuel, trimmed out with the setup, sticker tires and you go and just RIP off the absolute fastest time you can post.  LOVE IT!!!  And although we had gone considerable quicker than we did in practice, it was only good enough for 8th and 9th place for Scott (Sharp) and I.  However, 4th place through 8th place were separated by less than ONE TENTH of a second, so we were still in great shape.

The race: just awesome.  What a great time.  Ed did a great job to start the race and ran really well in traffic - but given the nature of the course and how traffic spreads out and people get jammed up behind each other, the leaders begin to lap traffic very quickly and we ultimately wound up a lap down to the positions in front of us.  We had a great pit stop though, and I was off!  That stint was probably one of the most enjoyable stints I've had behind the wheel - just pushing the car hard lap after lap, chucking it through the corners as fast as possible but still trying to leave enough room on the table to ensure you won't stuff it into the walls on exit - and turning our fastest laps of the weekend while at it.  Actually, I had turned the fastest race lap of all the Ferrari's - including Risi's Ferrari (who've been at this a lot longer than we have!).

We finished 8th, a lap down but right behind our teammates Scott and Johannes in 7th on track, and escaped without a scratch on the cars... VERY important for us right now...!  8th is still decent points for the championship, and I'm very optimistic about our progress and the rest of the season.

To say I had a good time would be an understatement.  That may only have been round two of the championship, but this is all looking really good.  The Sebring 12 Hour and the Long Beach Grand Prix as the first two of the season?  You can't beat it.

I am one happy 'Guy', and I am READY for the rest of this season.  I'm not sure if our competition is expecting too much from us right now... and I like it like that... but they are in for a surprise... ;)

Barber with BGB Motorsports / Continental Tire Challenge

This past weekend I raced with BGB Motorsports at the BEAUTIFUL Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama, for Grand-Am's Continental Tire Challenge.  It was a really fun weekend - as is any race weekend with the BGB crew.  They have got to be one of the most fun and family-like teams I've ever driven for, and they really make the race weekends purely fun and relaxing - even when I stress myself out about the competition!

My regular teammate Stu Tetreault was unable to make it to this race, so my long time friend and BGB team manager, John Tecce, was going to share the wheel with me.  Long-story-short, we knew John would drive very little during the race so I could get in and charge towards the front, so we didn't give him any time in the car during practice outside of one 20-minute run!  We did that so we could continue developing the setup on our old tried-and-true 911 Porsche, as it's now VERY hard to be competitive with the higher-horsepower Mustangs, Camaros and BMW M3's with our lower-horsepower 3.6l engine.

Although we did initially struggle with setup a bit throughout testing, our last practice session showed signs of brilliance and a definite improvement in performance when looking at our session split times (even though we didn't log a full 'fast lap').  Then the focus was on letting Tecce qualify the car, which he did well - especially for not having any time in the car during practice!

An even longer-story-short, we battled our way from basically dead-last (due to a stop-and-go penalty we received early in the race) to finish 11th.  For the last 30 minutes I was clearly the fastest car on track and made a HUGE charge through the ENTIRE ST classs (30-something cars) before I made it to the first GS car in our class - and THEN started slicing through to make my way up to 11th.  We had an INSANE amount of time under full course cautions - something like 80 minutes of it, so it really hindered my ability to race further up the charts.  But all in all I was pleased, when you look at the fact that during the race I had to have passed at least 80-90 cars! (61 cars total between the two classes - and TWICE I had to pass the ENTIRE ST class, and pass 20 GS cars to finish 11th - many of which I passed twice because of our pit rotation, and having to pass many of them again in the last 30 minutes...!!!)

Either way - Fun.  The team did great, my teammate/team manager John did great, and once again our little Porsche prevailed as a car that is ALWAYS in the hunt for the long run.

Our next race together is now less than two weeks away, as we race at VIR April 24th!  Click here for event details if you're interested in attending, or for information on live timing & scoring as well as the SPEED TV broadcast information!

http://www.grand-am.com/schedule/event.cfm?series=k&eid=1504

Here's a link to some great photos from the event as well:
http://bgb-motorsports.smugmug.com/Other/2010/2010-Barber-Motorsports-Park/11728136_saT8o#831011264_W7n5L