Texas Motor Speedway Leather Center 04/03/2001   Andy Wallace Champion Debut   Andy had a relatively relaxing February, post-Daytona. But towards the end of the month, his thoughts were turning very seriously towards driving the Champion Audi at Texas. Champion launched their Audi racing projects (the S4s plus the R8 prototype) on the 23rd. I was hoping to use that visit to their workshops to have a seat made, but the best laid plans etc…..The launch was a very high profile event. Dave Maraj had invited among others, Len Hunt of Audi North America, Don Panoz, plus Speedvision were there. It was a really impressive occasion. In typical Champion style, they made a big splash; all the lights and effects, it wanted only for the smoke (not allowed, something to do with the fire regulations). With all the car polishing going on, the last thing the team wanted was to make a humble seat for me, so that was delayed until we got to Texas. The car looked fantastic; the sight of it gleaming under the lights made me impatient to get out and test it. I can be impatient at times like this, but it turned out that my team mate Dorsey Schroeder and I had to wait until the Friday at Texas Motor Speedway for the first try. You need engineers from Audi and Michelin and so on, in order to run the car - we just couldn’t pull them all together at the same time. We hoped we might be able to run on Thursday at TMS, but Friday it was. It would also be the first time for both Dorsey and I at the Texas circuit. So no pressure then...! There was a lot to learn in a very short time. I was only too aware that “flanging it” would not be very helpful to the Team, either. We only had one session, and we tried to split it so we both had a fair crack. Generally we were getting used to the paddle gear shift; a great system. Audi have done a fantastic job. This system allows you to go so deep into corners, and you can get in a real mess and still sort it out. I only made one mistake with it, going down a gear instead of up. Once you’ve done that once, you don’t do it again. It’s essentially totally natural after the first few minutes. The only other paddle-shift system I’ve used was in a Formula Toyota single seater, in about ’92 I think. It was a pneumatic system that we were developing for the Group C car, although it was never used on the sports car. That single seater also had four wheel steering, but it didn’t have a fail safe system, it had a fail dangerous one! It failed, and put me off at the Bomb Hole at Snetterton, at the exact moment that Team Manager Glenn Walters arrived at the track to see how things were going! Needless to say, that was as far as that system went. The Audi’s paddle-shift is near perfect. Once you learn how to use it, it’s completely natural. You can gear the car perfectly for the engine power curve, and almost ignore where on the track you may need to change gear. On the installation lap on Friday morning, I could feel the car “porpoising” on the straight (an uncontrolled up & down motion caused by an aerodynamic disturbance), but that was only a ride height problem. Otherwise the car felt great. I really enjoyed getting to know the R8. We had to do some more work on the seat the Team had made for me - and that’s a job that’s outstanding before Sebring. I’m looking through the screen rather than over it, and this is not a problem until the screen gets dirty. The most amazing thing about driving the car is just how easy it is to spin the wheels when the tyres are cold. With hot tyres the traction is good, but for the first few laps great caution is necessary if you intend to keep the car pointing in the right direction! In the first wet session on Saturday morning, we had a terrible time. I was five seconds off the pace, and we both spun. It whipped round on me at about 120mph, in the right hand kink before the banking....right where Mr. Maraj was standing; isn’t that always the way? When we looked at the data, we could see that we had been running on the bump stops, so we made a large set-up change. I went out in the wet second session, felt the car was going much better, came back in, walked round to the monitor....and we were fastest. That felt good. My main problem was feeling the car under braking. You don’t get much feeling initially when you apply the brakes - it’s as though you’re insulated from any sensation of wheel lock up. In Qualifying, I thought we could get close to the factory cars.....We fired it up twice before the session began (leaving the paddock, then in pit lane) and it was fine. The green flag was shown, I waited 30 seconds for the track to clear, pressed the button…..and bang. Down by my right side there was this great noise and the strong smell of sulphur. The top had blown clean off the battery. I was busy explaining what I thought had happened, but of course the radio had given up, along with everything else. The team smelt the sulphur though, so they knew what it was. By the time they’d cleaned up the mess and fitted a new battery, 10 minutes had gone by. It was cold and damp, I knew the tyres took four or five laps to warm up…..we weren’t going to get close to the factory cars, after all. I had to go round and round to try and get some heat into the rubber, but a 1:23 came down to a 1:18 by the end, which was well down on where we would have been. I needed another few laps to get the tyres warm, but it was not to be this time. I doubt we’d have had pole, but we should have been close to a front row time. In the warm up on Sunday, we just made sure we had the set-up right. The car was fantastic! It was only the start of our third day with the car, but already we were getting very comfortable with it. The brake balance adjustment for cold / hot tyres and full / empty fuel load is critical on this car, but I was confident that I had all the information necessary to get this right. I was down to start, but I was aware of the difficulty of getting heat into the tyres in only two warm up laps. I was deliberately cautious at the start, and to be honest I didn’t get a good one. James (Weaver) was watching the race on TV in Florida, and he phoned me at the airport in the evening to congratulate me on the stunning move I pulled to get past the car behind me; good old James. So it was fourth place to begin with, but I stayed in contact, then I was all over Jan Magnussen for a while - and the factory Audis weren’t going away. I tended to be more careful in traffic than the others, for obvious reasons, but otherwise everything was under control. The Panoz doesn’t have the power just yet, but it is very good under braking. It wasn’t so good in the fast left-right in the infield. I knew if I could get by it, I would be able to pull away, but getting past wasn’t easy. Basically, everything was fine. This was turning out to be almost a perfect first race for us. We spoke on the radio about tyres - I felt that it was starting to slide a bit, but not enough to make it worth changing them after the first stint. I stopped under green, the stop was fine, I stayed in, and the car was just starting to slide a little bit more, but no real drama. We had a caution period after 10 to 15 more laps, so that was a good time to dive in for fresh tyres, and add some fuel to brim it. We timed it right, and I was still in a good position when I returned to the track. I felt that we were still doing all right - we couldn’t really have asked for it to go much better than this. We went green, and Brabs was in front of me. We had another good dice, just as we did at Daytona. I eventually managed to get past, and pull out a small gap. The factory Audis were maybe 10 seconds ahead. Then Emanuele Pirro had a coming together with a slower car and spun, bringing lots of muck back onto the track. I got alongside him as he came back on, but he stayed ahead. Then we had the Corvette crash; Brad Kettler - crew chief - warned me about debris on the track, so I was really careful, as we didn’t want a puncture at this stage, after so much had gone so well. We all shuffled up, and the three R8s were all together. We were very close to finishing the race on one more tank, so we obviously had a lot of talk about that on the radio. We decided to stop on the last lap but one behind the safety car, so we were talking all the way. I dived in and Dorsey took over. Looking back at it, I was delighted with how it had gone. Dorsey was out on cold tyres, so he had to go cautiously to start with. We both understood how ‘frisky’ the car is. Dorsey got stuck behind the black Panoz for a couple of laps, before blasting past, and chasing after the leaders. I looked at the monitor and thought that we could do it, because he was in fifth, and the only one of the front runners who didn’t have to stop again. The radio then went down.... As we’re unfamiliar with the car, and as he had to go onto reserve several laps before the end, he was seriously concerned about whether we’d make it. He was short shifting all the way, and after the race, we reckoned we’d have had enough for maybe one more lap. Dorsey dropped 10 - 15 seconds in the last few laps, and that was the only thing he could have done with no radio to give him fuel figures. We felt that perhaps we could have had a podium position, but at this early stage of the programme I think this was a good result. Dave Maraj was happy with fourth. The Team had done a great job with an unfamiliar car. As a driver of course I like to be in a position to win races. At both Daytona and Texas we were in that position. We didn’t win either of them, but we were in there battling it out at the front. We got very close at Daytona. Texas was different because everything was new. I can’t wait for the next one. Sebring. We’ll be testing from Monday onwards, we know the track, we’ve got over the new car syndrome, and experience there doesn’t go amiss. Ralf Kelleners joins us for the 12 Hours, so it will be interesting to get his view on the R8. Straight after Sebring I will begin testing with the new Bentley EXP Speed 8 Le Mans car. We have a very busy test schedule planned. 2001 is going to be quite a year… Andy Wallace link Copyright ©2000-©2023 TotalMotorSport