If anyone is inclined toward favorably noting recent quality teamwork, surely Burt Frisselle, Mark Wilkins and the AIM Autosport team deserve a nod for their No. 61 BMW-Riley’s fourth-place Rolex Sports Car Series finish on the 11-turn, 2.3-mile road course March 5 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
“That literally was the first time we'd been on that track with the Continental Tires,” Frisselle (below) said after the race. “We didn’t do any off-season testing down there at all.”
“We'd had a shakedown at Roebling Road (outside of Savannah, Ga.) on the way down to the race, but the power-steering pump broke after Mark and I got in something like 11-laps apiece.
“So when we got down there, we had to fix the pump the first day (Thursday) and our first laps were Friday.”
The team, based in Toronto, picked up some BMW of Canada attention and help in the off-season of sufficient nature to warrant AIM’s change from a longstanding relationship with Ford (Roush Yates Engines). Frisselle’s co driver is Mark Wilkins (below, left).
Steve Dinan’s tuned version of BMW’s 32 valve 5.0L V-8’s interaction with the DP’s XBo . . . um, er, XTRAC “386” longitudinal transaxle was an altogether different beast, Frisselle said, noting he’d even stalled the car after a pit stop.
“The power comes on completely differently,” he said, somewhat embarrassed. “The torque builds over a broader time period than the Ford.
“With the Ford you could just put petal to metal, dump the clutch and leave a 50-foot burnout like Michael (Valiante) does on pit road – the torque comes on that fast – but you need to treat the BMW more like a street car, working the clutch and engine revs together – one going out, the other going in.”
The BMW engine, which isn’t that far off of what the reader can find in a BMW dealership on either side of the border, evidently lends itself to efficiently transferring power to a road.
As drag racers have long understood, a burnout’s bluish-white smoke and acrid smell is great showmanship but hardly gets one from point A to point B in an efficient manner.
Being sure the team’s new BMW engine was doing its job properly was none other than BMW tuning meister Dinan, who no doubt is quite interested in contrasting the feel of the BMW versus that of the Ford’s.
“Steve’s in a unique position with our coming on board with the BMW,” Frisselle said after being “tuned” by Ford for more than five years.
“The TELMEX guys (the only other team running a BMW engine for 2011) went from a non-competitive engine to a competitive engine, whereas Mark and I are coming from an engine that remains very competitive.” (The below being a picture of the TELMEX car actually winning March 5 at HMS with BMW power).
The Lexus/Toyota engine used by Chip Ganassi Racing w/ Felix (y José) Sabates for its No. 01 TELMEX Lexus-Riley in 2009 – the engine’s last competitive Rolex Series season – hadn’t been further developed since the summer of 2008, according to Toyota Racing Development’s Gary Reed at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course’s 2009 EMCO Gears Classic, where the end-of-year termination announcement was officially announced.
Frisselle said the key point on which he, his teammate and likely every other DP driver in the series must recognize is that the Continental Tires are unlike its predecessors.
“The strategy no longer is anything but conservation of tires, as I see it,” he said, adding that by the end of the HMS race, “The (Action Express Racing, with Joao Barbosa driving, No.) 9 car was catching me every bit as fast as I was catching the (No.) 10 (SunTrust) car. He had his nose up under my rear a couple of times.”
“Like us, David (Donohue in the AER No. 5 Porsche-Riley), Max (Angelelli in the No. 10 SunTrust Chevy/Cadillac-Dallara) and Scott (Pruett in the No. 01 TELMEX BMW-Riley) and Joao (AER No. 9 BMW-Riley) had worked to conserve our tires so we’d have something left for the race’s end. Others didn’t and paid the price.”
“It was a real battle over the last few laps and I think if we’d had another two or three, Joao and I would’ve gotten around Max, though I don’t think we could’ve gotten David.”
“From the driving-the-car standpoint, it's extremely difficult for the driver and I wish we’d have better grip at the end of the race. But you know drivers, we’ll take more horsepower, more grip, gears and all that stuff any day of the week.”
“The ones who’ll benefit from all of this in the end are the fans, because the teams who fail to properly manage their tires are going to go really fast, get out front but then fade as the race goes on,” Frisselle said.
“The teams who properly manage their wear will have enough at that time to start coming on. So cars you haven’t seen at the front will suddenly start showing up there and you’re going to see four or five cars battling it out for the top spots at the end of the race, right down to the wire. And that’s going to be really cool to watch,” the driver, inexorably marching to his big Big 3-Oh, said.
Turning a corner, too, is AIM, who’s oldest Riley DP (No. 001, folks) will appear with new livery for the April 9 Barber Motorsports Park Rolex Series race near Birmingham, Ala.
“We’ve started putting the Gamma 88 colors on the car and its looking good,” AIM’s Ian Willis said.
“You know, we’ve been behind the eight-ball before and have done well,” Willis said. “But this new BMW engine is something else and I’m really looking forward to what we’ll accomplish at Barber (Motorsports Park) and VIR after that.”
“It’s going to provide some excellent racing, for sure.”
ASSUMMING SUNTRUST CAR CHIEF TRAVIS HOGUE CAN FIND THE SUNTRUST 10 CAR
Hearing some scurrilous journalistic-type rumors, proffered by an unnamed herein reporter (well, at least within this particular paragraph), SunTrust No. 10 Car Chief Travis Houge was certain his team was suddenly in deep water only hours before the race.
“First hearing the cars were wrecked in Turn 1, Hogue smiled, lifted and swept arm as if to point out the 10 car behind him, started speaking about “it being right there” only to find it long gone.
Looking a tad befuddled, car chiefs don’t like disappearing cars, you know. Obviously running down some sort of mental check list whose end was soon reached then with suddenly ashen face, Houge immediately implemented some sort of contingency plan, drilled at least into his head if no one else’s, exhorting what few SunTrust team members were around, suddenly shouting “Emergency Plan Able Baker Delta 3 is now immediately in effect! This is no drill! This is no drill!” Houge grabbed his radio head gear, while continually broadcasting the apparent code talk over and over, repeating the emergency action code nonstop.
Hardly hesitating Houge made like a standard, everyday Miamian freely disregarding highway traffic laws, commenced to run over a few souls like a semi over Volkswagens, shifting into high gear between the hauler and pit road where, looking like a gymnast on spring break in Daytona, Hogue leapt high into the air and thence earned a 9.800 by simultaneously planting both shoe-clad feet solidly atop the HMS pit road wall.
Frantically scouring the Turn-1’s far ends (seen above) for signs of the SunTrust car or life within, again and again Houge would repeatedly shout, “Emergency Plan Able Baker Delta 3 is now immediately in effect! This is no drill! This is no Drill! Why isn’t anyone answering me!!”
Soon seeing an an old guy take a picture and then suddenly bolt for stage left, Houge dropped his right hand only to then see “his” car slowly being pushed into the pit stall below.
Suddenly, something seemed entirely amiss to Houge.
“Hey, Travis,” Bob Adie said, “If you hadn’t been yelling so doggone much with all that Delta and Wanna make ‘er stuff we could’ve told you everything was fine! But, noooo, you gotta get everyone else riled up to no end! Dadgummit! Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if Homestead AFB hadn’t scrambled a couple of F-16s by now!”
“Oh, I’m gonna get that $%#*&^$&#^$%@
#$^%@) Williams!!!” the still-running old guy heard from faraway as he passed through HMS’ faraway tunnel at such full-tilt boogie speed that it would’ve made Jessie Owens proud.
Nah, Houge didn’t fall for anything so dumb. And anyone who knows Bob Adie is aware he never says anything at all, so he’d be stepping way out of character to nail someone with a word like “hell” – or even dadgummit.
So, like, no way. But it was fun, especially with the perfect picture from Brian Cleary.
Yet, April Fools is just around the corner and one needs to warm up.
Later,
DC
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