MIXED BOWL

SALINAS, California – Called hereabouts as “The World’s Salad Bowl” it doesn’t take much of a drive outside of Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca to understand that about which the chamber of commerce speaks.

RINGIING THE BELL

Shout Joe Foster’s name from behind him in the Laguna paddock and he’ll whirl 180-degrees on one of his shoe heels because turning his head really isn’t a option right now.

“It’s pretty stiff,” Foster said, while doing nothing physically to belie his words.

While Gunter Schaldach was able to stroll up the hill on the outside of Road America’s Turn 1 after he launched from atop the gravel pit (he darn sure wasn’t actually IN it), Foster and his No. 40 VisitFlorida.com Mazda RX-8 was left to writhe in pain while awaiting rescue.

Well, maybe not “writhe.”

“I don’t remember a thing between the time I was hit and my first memory afterward, which was in the helicopter on the way to the hospital,” Foster said.

“I really had my bell rung.”

The recorded data (derived from a technology that Grand-Am cars aren’t supposed to have, by the way) showed Schaldach’s No. 07 CoolTV/Mobil 1 Chevrolet Camaro plowed into the rear of Foster’s Mazda having a 52-mph speed differential.

“There was nothing wrong with the front of the car. It was the rear clip that was just flattened,” he said.

I didn’t get the stiff neck from hitting the barrier. It came from getting hit in the rear, before I left the track.”

Foster’s so-called “stiff neck” is owed to a dislocated vertebra, one hopefully returned to the order in which it had long maintained until the wreck.

“All that you see me doing in the in-car (post-wreck) video, moving around; talking to the corner workers, I don’t remember a thing about it.”

Foster said the car’s remains already are undertaking repair at the Riley Technologies’ Mooresville, N.C. shop.

“Pretty much the entire rear will be new,” Foster said. “It’ll get over the hurt before I will.”

HERE TO ETERNITY

“Four tenths-of-a-second is pretty much an eternity,” No. 99 GAINSCO Auto Insurance Chevrolet-Riley driver and second-fast qualifier Jon Fogarty said after another race in which the resurgent Dragón Rojo is fast enough to stake a front-row claim, but still fell short of a total field domination (it’s kinda like “world domination,” Mark) of the kind it has enjoyed previously, especially in 2007.

So, who and what dominated?

“I’m not overstating it when I say that the Dallara makes me look good,” SunTrust Racing’s Ricky Taylor seriously said after claiming his – not just the Dallara’s – fourth straight pole in the No. 10 Chevrolet-powered Daytona Prototype.

Uh-huh, but seriously, folks . . .

TOP DOG, AGAIN

Wayne Nonnamaker did it again: a front row.

Too bad Wayne ain’t “Joe.”

Though once performing well in the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge Series, the team has languished by comparison after stepping up a couple of seasons ago into the Rolex Series’ Grand Touring category.

Now hitting on all cylin . . . um, rotors, Nonnamaker cited changes made to the team’s personnel structure as being key to Sahlen’s return to rarified air.

“Jay Chapman is our team manager, who really worked at getting the team organized and put together,” Nonnamaker said after his topmost qualifying run Friday at Laguna Seca, powered by Mazda.

“Then we’ve got Kate (Kathryn) Crawford Wallace, who is our engineer and who has done just a superb job in getting us a very driveable car, improving what is already a great Mazda platform.

“I think the last piece we had to put into place was John Edwards. He and I are a perfect fit, in terms of what we do for set-up, how we drive.”

More from and/or about Laguna,

Later,

DC