A day beginning with the CORE autosport team on the Mans Prototype Challenge (LMPC) class pole position resulted in a Mid-Ohio Sports Car Challenge American Le Mans Series (ALMS) race filled with spins, caution periods and driving rain, causing the event to end under red-flag conditions. Despite many challenges, the new-for-2011 team extended its lead in the LMPC driver and team championships.
Teammates Ricardo Gonzalez and Gunnar Jeannette, in the #06 Excel Consultants / Composite Resources ORECA FLM09 finished fourth in the LMPC class, 12th overall, while the sister #05 Bayshore Recycling / Composite Resources car, driven by Frankie Montecalvo and team founder Jon Bennett finished fifth in LMPC, 17th overall.
The day began with sunshine and Gonzalez in the #06 in pole position laying down fast laps, but less than 30 minutes into the two hour and 45 minute event he was punted by the #63 car – causing a long delay. Jeannette took over the #06 an hour into the event, and 15 minutes after that the #06 spun off track. Now back in seventh spot, Jeannette was able to make it up to fourth place when storms appeared at the two-hour mark. The team switched to wet-weather MICHELIN tires, but due to multiple incidents on the track, caution periods were prominent and then, due to extreme rains, the cars were brought into pit lane and parked.
Bennett drove first stint in the #05, maintaining the car’s fifth place starting position until handing the car off to Montecalvo. The young driver advanced his position to third, until coming in for wet-weather tires after rains began. Four minutes later Montecalvo suffered an off-track excursion and ended in the gravel trap at the “keyhole.” It took many laps to pull out the #05, and at that point Montecalvo did what he could so salvage a decent finish.
Next for CORE autosport is the four-hour-long Time Warner Road Race Showcase featuring the American Le Mans Series presented by Tequila Patrón on Saturday, August 20 at Road America, Elkhart Lake, WI.
Gunnar Jeannette
“That move by Eric Lux (#63) was overly optimistic and really took us out, almost putting us a lap down. We made up some spots and coming through the ‘roller coaster’ section of the course I had the Muscle Milk car behind me (LMP1 Aston Martin) and I simply glanced in my mirror as I hit the brakes and that was all it took for the rear of the car to come around really quick. Unfortunately with that we lost a couple of laps, but we hung on through the rain and actually gained some in the championship standings. We’ll take what we can get and salvage from a day like this.”
Ricardo Gonzalez
“Today was tough, but for our championship run it’s fine, we have actually extended our lead over the second place drivers. It’s too bad that we couldn’t make more of our pole position, but at the end our main objective is a championship and we got lucky this time. I got hit three times by Eric Lux (#63 driver) until the third time I spun and then the car was not right after that. After the spin my tires got very dirty and when I came back on track I was in the middle of the GT fight and they were putting a lot of dirt onto the track, so it took me a long time to clean my tires. Once I got them clean I started overtaking and getting faster, but it wasn’t the best place to get back on track. Overall, we’re still in the hunt and we will come back from this.”
Jon Bennett
“I think we got off to a reasonably good start, but racing’s racing, it’s unpredictable. The combination of unfortunate on-track incidents for the #06 car and mother nature taking a bite out of the #05 made it hard. But I think we’ll gather it back up. We’ll get to Road America with a bit of confidence and it should be a good track for us. We’ll keep plugging, because as it’s said, it ain’t over ‘till it’s over. We tested at Road America back in June and we should be able to take what we learned from that test to be fast off the transporter. There we’re looking for a good race and of course another one-two finish like we had at Mosport would be great.”
Frankie Montecalvo
“After we put the wet-weather tires on I got sideways and the car ended up in the gravel trap. I hit the brakes and it spun, went in sideways. It just stopped us dead in the water. I shut the engine off to make sure it didn’t overheat and it took forever for me to get a tow out and we lost a lot of laps. I think we were doing good before that. I really think we were keeping up with the pace in the dry. We had a good car but as soon as it got wet I think our setup didn’t work. It was good for the dry but not very good in the wet. If it wouldn’t have rained or if we could’ve held the car on the track we would’ve ended up with a podium, but that’s what happens sometimes.”
Source : CORE Autosport