Portland International Raceway - 05/08/2001   Friday Report   The day started out as a post card shot for Portland and the “Northwet” portion of the US. The usual rains were upon us, as this area is stereotyped with (somewhat deserving). By the time the ALMS cars went out, the rain was gone, but the cloud cover was very inconsistent, resulting in varying track conditions. Today was very much a “If you don’t like the weather, wait a few minutes and it will change” type of day. The rest of the weekend should see improvement. Just hope the humidity goes away ; it was rather gooey out at the track. Portland International Raceway, is basically a flat track, with two straights that are connected by twisty bits at each end. What is unique though, is that it is within the City Limits, and is actually a City Park. Being that it is within the city limits brings some unique circumstances. The local “Oh I didn’t know there was a race track here when I moved here; it is much too loud” residents have brought upon the track noise ordinances. For this event , the ALMS Series Cars are limited to 117 dB, which is monitored from the outside of the track, between turns 7 and 8, just as the cars are accelerating up to speed on the back straight. This causes headaches every year for the teams as they scramble to meet the noise limitations. Last season, the Rafanelli Team actually had curved exhausts which directed the noise away from the monitor. Some cars, such as the BMW, are fortunate, in that their exhaust is already directed away from the monitor station. Others will just have to adapt. As of today, there had not been any apparent difficulties. In scrutineering, the Petersen Motorsports Porsche was found to have the wing mounted too far back in relation to the bodywork. Actually what was discovered was that the rear bumper had been pushed-in due to a bump at Sears Point. This was corrected and later the car was passed. The Saleen, running this race in the normal Konrad white / turquoise scheme, was found to have the wrong wing end plates, and this was easily changed. The second Barbour Reynard is due to be back in action at Mosport. The team has been awaiting delivery of the carbon fiber bulkhead / shelf for the transmission. It was due to arrive from Reynard at their team shop today. This is rather a labor intensive piece to make, and that is the reason for the delay. A big surprise was that the Factory Audis actually looked human for a while in practice. Both cars had brake lock-up entering turn 1, and one of the cars actually spun to a harmless stop. Eventually these problems were sorted out, as the cars returned to their usual top of the chart times. It was good to see the #51 Panoz driven by Klaus Graf actually be second quickest for quite a while. We believe it was Klaus, as it was difficult to tell from the time sheets who turned the quickest times. Those awaiting to jump on the BMW bandwagon can wait for a while, as both the Alex Job Porsches were quicker in the first session. This track is more suited to the Porsche than Sears Point was, so we’ll wait to see what happens the rest of the weekend. Gary Horrocks Copyright ©2000-©2023 TotalMotorSport