September 8, 2006
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Round 8 of the Speed World Challenge TC Race Mosport
Mosport Round 8 of the SPEED World Challenge
TC Race Report Through the Windshield of the Woodhouse/Kicker/Alex’s Lemonade Dodge SRT-4
by Brian Smith
The Kicker/Woodhouse Dodge SRT-4 team would like to put in a request for “no luck”. We do not need good luck … we just do not need the bad luck.
People talk about how tough it is to learn Mosport and how difficult it is to be fast. I can understand why. I heard similar comments when I first went to the Nurburgring. Actually, Mosport seems like a scaled down (much scaled down) Nurburgring. Hills, blind corners, high speed blind corners, bumps, off camber corners, etc. If there was a track that practice would be important it would be here.
So, to make it an interesting weekend our motor decided to throw in the towel after a few laps in the first practice session on the promoter test day. It probably decided it did not like life in the oil temperature range we had been asking it to live for half the season. That meant no practice and the crew (Joel, Larry, Marvin) spent the rest of the day replacing the motor. A few laps around the paddock that evening insured the car was ready for the next day.
The first official twenty minute practice session was utilized to learn the track and determine that our setup from Road America was not going to work here. The car was bouncing around at inappropriate times, locking the rear tires during braking, etc. Minor details. The team did some significant changes to the setup for the second and final practice session which resulted in 7th fastest. Not bad considering we were utilizing our new restrictor from our friends at SCCA and we only had about 15 laps around the track. If we had another test session we could have tuned the car better, but at least we were in the ball park. Hope was high for qualifying and the race.
The qualifying session started off damp with a dry line at the end of the session. We were quick in the first couple of laps when it was damp, but fuel pump issues in the fuel cell resulted in a sputtering motor after two laps. So we were unable to take advantage of the drying conditions like everyone else. The result was our worse qualifying position of the year for the Woodhouse/Kicker Dodge SRT-4 … 21st. Where was that “no luck”? The positive was we would have a good shot at the “hard charger” award.
Race day appeared with every team trying to play weather forecaster. At the time for the cars to be taken to the grid the track was still very wet and there was light rain. However, the radar showed it might stop during our race which could result in a dry line. Hmm … the big question was whether to go out on rain tires or dry tires. We chose rain tires with our best guess of a rain setup. A few teams went to grid with dry tires. All of them except one changed to rains in the grid … the car that did not ended up in the kitty litter during the race. One team missed the grid all together while they were contemplating their setup. This was going to be a fun race. We lined up for the standing start only to learn that one of the cars had blown up on the warm up lap so we would be doing a single file rolling start. Bummer!! I am sure we would have gained several positions on the start. The start came and I was caught out a little (the front guys started racing around turn 8) at the start. There were several cautions which robbed us of green flag racing laps. However, we were able to work our way up to 11th. We would have finished better then that except the handling went away in the last 4 or 5 laps and I spent a lot of time dueling with Altenburg for the 10th position. Actually, that was fun. We were passing each other multiple times in the same corner. All while in close quarters with less then ideal traction. We never touched … not sure how. Keep an eye out for the last part of the TV broadcast. I did not mention that we had plenty of large oversteer moments during the race, but no issues. We did have an interesting moment on one of the restarts. I dove to the inside of the Tindol car into turn 1, on the slippery part of the track, which resulted in a full counter steer slide beside him. The good news is we did not hit him or spin … the bad news is we did not get that position. However, he did spin himself at turn 2 which allowed me to get around.
So we ended the race in 11th with the “hard charger” award. Not bad for the eventful weekend. Hopefully we will have “no luck” at Road Atlanta and we can pull off a win.
Thanks to the entire crew for the long hours changing the motor, fixing the fuel issues and the setup changes.
Remember to go online at www.woodhouse.com to purchase your next vehicle no matter where you live, upgrade your car stereo system or purchase your SRT with Kicker products (www.kicker.com), visit www.turnonetrackevents.com for corporate and track day events and consider supporting www.alexslemonade.com in their fight against children’s cancer.
