TAKING THE MEDICINE

Given that Action Express Racing's opening-day focus at Detroit's Belle Isle Rolex Series race was learning that breaking up isn't really "hard to do," it only seems fitting the race itself would boil down to a 1-2 finish between the Action Express Racing boys.

Like a blossoming "overnight" movie star suddenly in a spotlight after years of toil, Saturday's Chevy Grand Am 200 finish actually started on "lucky" 13 Aug., 2011, at the end of the Watkins Glen 200.

At The Glen, the AXR Porsche (Cayenne) Riley Daytona Prototypes finished sixth and seventh; the Double Ds' (David Law and David Donohue) No. 5 finishing ahead of the Double J's No. 9 of João Barbosa and J.C. France.

"We looked at the data from the race and noticed that Darren and João had a lot in common," former NASCAR Sprint Cup Muckety Muck-turned-consultant Gary Nelson, of Gary Nelson and Associates, Inc., said Saturday in Detroit while killing time before the late-afternoon Belle Isle Chevrolet Grand-Am 200 race start.

His curiosity piqued, Nelson began the task of analyzing year-over-year driver data and, perhaps more importantly, associated and integrated his drivers' thoughts within the context of that data.

Yet, it's likely Nelson couldn't have at all traveled that particular road if the AXR team hadn't "been professionals," as AXR's race team operations director Elton Sawyer put it Sunday morning.

"The Action Express guys have worked their fingers to the bone to put competitive cars on the grid. Throughout this deal they've been professionals through and through, man. I'm proud of 'em for digging deep; for never giving up."

"They (the wrenches), none of us really know where this driver-change thing would go but they never stopped putting out cars that could win. The race Saturday proved they prepared cars that could win and that meant a lot to me."

COMPARING THE APPLES AND ORANGES

Even if maintained by dedicated team members and even if the two (or three) Riley DPs in AXR's possession were made by the brilliant folks over at Riley Technologies, they weren't identical; not even close.

Whether curse or genius, every engineer working on every car nearly everywhere thinks his "the better solution" to making a car go faster. Sometimes change can be effected with the application of a wrench; other times with a new "widget." With enough widgets and wrench turns, before long one Riley really isn't like another Riley.

AXR lead engineer, Iain Watt, presently on his second Rolex Series' duty tour (the first with owner Eddie Cheever and, mostly, drivers Christian Fittipaldi and Antonio Garcia), spent the better part of the 2010-2011 offseason taking two Rileys and making them one or, actually, two.

Confused? Of course you are. Still, you should see this brain. So we'll try it again.

Thus, becoming Watt's principal mission was to take two (or three) cars and bring them closer together insofar as baseline configurations were concerned.

"Why didn't AXR just buy new Rileys?" you ask.

For a California boy, Nelson has turned into one of the best Southerners around. Southerners hate wasting stuff (the reason for their junk piles; cars on cement blocks in front yards, etc.).

Recently, Nelson's spare time has been devoted to building a Café Racer. Proud of that still-under-construction but nearly finished bike, stored in Nelson's cell phone are pictures taken from more angles than those found in a porn star's portfolio. His proudest pics? The junk he's turned into viable parts.

Heck, had Nelson lived in the Middle Ages, he would've been an alchemist -- you know, the folks who tried converting everyday metals like lead into gold. Nelson, though, probably would've succeeded.

Thus, spending money when old parts will do is sorta woven into Nelson's DNA and the AXR team was tasked with putting a couple of Humpty Dumpties together again.

Yet, unlike the King's Men and HD, Messrs. Watt, Sawyer and Nelson, with a big assist from the rest of the AXR guys, succeeded and, best of all from Nelson's viewpoint, he could effectively compare data generated by the AXR drivers.

"Generally" arising at the same time was a delicate political matter involving a "minimum purchase" and, before you can say "cookie cutter," AXR had two brand-spanking new identical DP chassis that offered a bonus: new comparative data from an entirely different baseline.

At first having Watt's "identical" Rileys through 2011, then for 2012 the Pratt and Whitney, er, "Miller," um, "Coyote" Corvettes (if one can't dazzle with brilliance, then baffle with B.S), the two distinct platforms from two different constructors afforded accurate comparisons.

At race tracks "we'd unload identical cars and the drivers started taking them in different directions; sometimes on the same car!" Nelson said.

All of that's fine and dandy, even wonderful had the multiple drivers and two teams produced wins -- something expected from two-car teams -- but AXR kept coming up short in the "wins" column.

In 2011, after what would prove their season's worst finish of 9th in the Rolex 24 At Daytona, Donohue and Law would not finish worse than sixth place -- four of those, consecutively at that -- and combined for a remaining seven top-5 finishes, of which three were podiums but none were a first place. They finished third in the championship, three points ahead of a 4th-place Alex Gurney and Jon Fogarty, who didn't record any championship points whatsoever in the second Watkins Glen race but who recorded two wins.

In the 2009, 2010 and 2011 seasons, Barbosa finished 9th, 13th and 5th, respectively -- the 5th-place season coming mostly with a three-person team including J.C. France and Terry Borcheller, excepting that season's final three races for which Borcheller sat out.

Clearly, the contributions of Watt and Sawyer were beginning to show, but they couldn't get over the hump that kept all of them from scoring a 1st-place.

According to Nelson, some of the drivers wanted to go in the same direction -- mechanically and/or aerodynamically -- but Nelson saw they weren't in the same car for the same race.

"One driver would take the car one way, another driver would take it another way. Then their respective partners would try to tune it a little more to their liking and, before long, each car was different for the race and just about every driver wasn't really happy with the setups."

"We started noticing that the preferences of one driver in one car were a lot like the preferences of another driver over in the other (sister) car."

For the most part in sports car racing one accepts the premise of "compromise" when it comes to driving teams. The problem with a compromise is that it is just that.

Though two drivers might be demonstrable championship winners while driving individually or for different teams, they may well fail to perform equally well with each other while in the same car.

With data in hand after the New Jersey Motorsports Park race, the AXR brain trust had a sit down and made the decision to switch the drivers around.

"It was a team decision," Nelson confirmed. "It wasn't just one guys decision."

It had all boiled down to a difference in a driver's preferences behind the wheel and tweaking a formula that no longer could be inviolate.

"That's what we needed for the cure," Nelson said.

That "cure" may well have been found.

Later,

DC