IN THE MIDDLE

 

It’s almost where Mid-Ohio Sports Car course is to be found – in the middle, that is - whether we’re talking Ohio geography or the Rolex Sports Car Series presented by Crown Royal Cask No. 16’s racing season.

Six races remain on the 12-race 2009 Rolex Series calendar following this weekend’s Mid-O race and one might correctly cipher (an old Jethro Bodine higher-mathematics routine) Mid-O also being the season’s sixth race … unless you ask a team owner – otherwise just as likely to include Daytona International Speedway’s January’s Test Days as a “race” due to its expense.

“We spend just as much money going there as we would just about any race weekend,” has grumbled more than one owner. Other owners, especially later Rolex 24 At Daytona winners, say something along the lines of, “Nyah, nyah, nyah-nyah-nyah!” (notice that a certain Test Days no-show, instead preferring a coast-down test, didn’t win a fourth-consecutive Rolex 24?)

Tangent Alert! Time to regain original course.

And that’s something else to which Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course can very nearly claim because it certainly was one of the United States’ earliest, purpose-built sportscar courses, having been born by the late Les Griebling in 1961.

Originally slightly longer (2.4-mile, 15-turn) than the configuration mostly in use today (2.258-mile, 13-turn), in the decades since the course has seen some of motorsports’ best talent try and fly (Joey Hand comes to mind) in an attempt to beat what many believe to be one of the most technically challenging courses anywhere.

Among the capable few have proven to be the No. 99 GAINSCO Auto Insurance Pontiac-Riley team, whose drivers Alex Gurney and Jon Fogarty for the past two seasons have made the track look like their personal playpen.

In 2007, after some folks successfully dodged a veritable tornado that ripped through the grounds on the Thursday preceding, DP competitors were left scratching their heads, if not otherwise downright embarrassed when the GAINSCO car looked as though it were somehow rolling along invisible rails, running at the point for the entirety of a caution-free race. Ironically, that race’s fast lap was one thing they didn’t claim (a 1:18.483, set by a Chip Ganassi Racing w/ Felix y Jose Sabates driver named Michael Valiante, now with Mike Shank Racing. Got you, huh?).

As the GAINSCO team had done earlier in the 2007 season at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez - when it unleashed the “perfect pit stop” on the way to running down and passing Krohn Racing’s Colin Braun and Max Papis for that race’s win – the team would again raise the level of competitiveness when many learned the GAINSCO car had begun using a 7-post test rig to gain a handle on the track layouts it faced (go here http://tiny.cc/Ez7gI to get Lola’s summary on its 7-poster).

Not to escape notice, though, are GAINSCO engineer Kyle Brannan, team owner Bob Stallings and team manager Terry Wilbert, nor the rest of the crew because“heart” is always an important if not intangible aspect of winning.

Yet, Mother Nature’s curveball is something for which testing isn’t generally performed. If such were the case, “scrambling” to clean windscreens wouldn’t have happened in early May at New Jersey Motorsports Park (though Jeff Hazel, et al, had worked out those Kinks, helping that team’s Nic Jonsson and Ricardo Zonta win in a condensation-free No. 76 Krohn Racing Ford L-O-L-A, Lola).

Keeping in top form in 2008, Mother Nature would play a direct role in that year’s Mid-O race, which started with just about everyone aware of, and many fans fleeing, a humungous rainstorm heading toward Mid-O and which hit soon after the racers took the first green flag.

One of the wonderful things about being on the road with sportscar racing is knowing that a race usually is run as anticipated (not having to get a room extension or rebook airplane flights is enough of a “good” reason) and such was the case that day, which the Rolex Series’ Mark Raffauf later characterized as being one of the most unusual he’s seen in four decades of officiating.

According to Raffauf, cars slid from the course at each of the course’s turns when the rain just absolutely, all-at-once dumped onto the track. Three of four cars simultaneously undertaking an “off” is itself usually out of the ordinary but so many made like a rink and skated that Raffauf said he simply turned to the track’s officials, shrugged his shoulders and asked, “Well, which turn do you want to tackle first?”

Fogarty, in the GAINSCO’s cockpit at the time, recalled that he was sarcastically critical of his fellow drivers’ abilities while watching numerous cars slipping and sliding to the course’s edges and onto bordering grass - until he, too, was suddenly slipping and sliding.

Still, the team nevertheless won back-to-back EMCO Gears Classic trophies and will this Saturday try for an unprecedented three-consecutive wins, which no other Rolex Series DP team - with the same drivers - has previously accomplished at any of the series’ venues.

Stallings says the team isn’t shirking or even fearful of the challenge.

“We thrive on this sort of thing,” Stallings said earlier this week. “The team gears up for any race, but when you can throw a record at them it gives them even more incentive to show their stuff.”

Speaking of “show,” we aren’t even out of Mid-O yet thoughts and chatter are frequently turning to the upcoming July 4 Rolex Series race at Daytona International Speedway.

This post is getting a tad long in the tooth, so the informational details will be saved for a later “gossip” post, but the Kyle Busch and Scott Speed combo aren’t the only Sprint Cup types heading for the Brumos Porsche 250 sprint race there. Indeed, some anxious participants – denied a chance there – are chomping a the bits for an anticipated Aug. 7 DP ride at The Glen. If everything I’m hearing is correct, two of stock car’s heaviest hitters will team for that race. Like I said, though, …

Later.

DC