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Portland International Raceway

05/08/2001

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From Friday

© Tom Kjos

(Delayed by email problems)

Portland, Oregon, USA--Cool temperatures while much of the rest of the US has been in sweltering heat. Intermittent showers, with spells of clearing when it got quite warm. This is the Pacific Northwest, a maritime climate, but descriptively much like the Eifel; if you don't like the weather now, wait a few minutes--it will change. Oh, and the famous Tillamook sharp cheddar here is not orange, but proper English white, or nearly so.

Weather may well play havoc with key decisions for this race. Yokohama was sipping intermediate wets for PTG's M3 GTR this morning. Some we talked to expected warm and dry for the rest of the meeting, others rain tomorrow and dry Sunday, still others dry tomorrow and wet Sunday.

At least one team is hoping for a wet race. Dave Maraj, Champion Racing principle, knows his 2000 Audi R8 is "behind a big step-up" in development, both a new chassis and the new direct injection turbo V8. "There will always be a factory team" he says, "that has to be the way it is to test and develop the car. Or at least a team that is in Germany near Audi's engineering resources." Still, he is hopeful of a time when the difference between the factory team and a privateer like Champion is not the kind of "step-up" that there is now. "If we can get past that, then the curve is a little more flat," he said. For now, Dave is looking for an equalizing factor. He thinks rain here could be that advantage. "Johnny and Andy can outdrive them," in the wet, he believes.
This track is flat, dead flat, and mostly fast. Yet we see double dive planes on all of the prototypes. Why, when low downforce would seem to be called for? Dave Maraj again has the answer, "fast, but very slippery." In fact, spinouts in the Festival Curves, the end-of-straight chicane, seem to validate that. Losing it there was the "thrill ride" of the day for the drivers. Audi, Panoz, Viper--they all did nice donuts with burn-outs to get righted again in today's practice, and countless others did at least a nice little "tail wiggle" on the way out.

Today was a testing session, a half-hour for GT/GTS, then an hour combined, and finally a half-hour for the prototypes. "Don't pay attention to test times," says Tom Milner, PTG's owner. But Tom, what then would we scribes write about? You put drivers on a track and they are going to "go for it" later, if not sooner.

Well into the session the look of GT was what we saw at Sears Point. Yours truly, the "Porsche is toast" prognosticator was looking good. Our esteemed editor thought differently. "Nothing in racing is certain, Tom," he said. At an hour in, it was BMW, BMW, BMW...well you get the picture. Then, wham, Sasha Maassen put the McKenna Alex Job Racing Porsche convincingly ahead of the pack with a 1:13.731. For reference, the first time set on this track by a Porsche GT3 was Cort Wagner in Practice Session 1 in 1999--at 1:15.197. Today, in a "test," six cars would better that by a bunch. By the end of the test, both AJR Porsches would sit in the mid 1:13s; all the BMWs at 1:14 and change. An unidentified BMW-associated source said, "Porsche gave up pace at Sears Point to make their point; this is their true speed." From our perspective it is not important whether that is the case or not. What is true is that the BMW domination on a track at which they have never lost was undoubtedly overstated. And Porsche's pace here, on a track that is tailored to the GT3 RS's characteristics probably similarly overstates the performance of that car. What we get everywhere else, of course, is just what we want--a flat-out head-to-head fender-banging war. AJR and PTG seem to be prepared to give us just that, but in a reversal of history, it is a "BMW brigade", the Bavarian machines outnumbering the competitive Wiessach 911s four to two. We hope it will be three, as it seemed to be at Sebring before the tragic death of Bob Wollek properly precipitated the withdrawal of his Petersen Motorsports Porsche.

With three drivers on the strength, the #30 911 GT3-RS is not up to speed yet, over 1.3 seconds adrift of the last of the M3s. With Johnny Mowlem and Timo Bernhard two of those three, the car should not go solely into their hands in a sprint? The last two Porsches are rent-a-ride or "here to have fun" efforts in "Rs", not the upgraded "RS" model. They will only show on attrition in this field, and times six to seven seconds back of the Petersen Porsche, and eight to nine seconds off the GT best today starkly illustrate the fact. We'll just say that the racing lines taken through the Festival Curves by the Kyser and Barbour entries were "different" than those of the rest of the GT field.

GTS again promises a first class fight between the single Konrad Saleen S7R and the two Corvette C5-Rs. This time there was no question of GTS being headed by the best of the GTS field. The GTS cars were out hammering the track from the gun. Even the American Viperacing Vipers spent time ahead of the GTs when Shane Lewis put the #45 car into 11th overall with a 1:14.162 shortly before the hour mark. In the end, they would not better that, while three GTs would, but the big V10s are beginning to show some of their former pace. By the close of the session, the Saleen would outpace the two Corvettes by better than six tenths of a second with a time of 1:11.718 to Andy Pilgrim's best of 1:12.380. Goodyears for both of these teams, but different compound choices made all the difference at Sears Point.

Weather could lead to different strategies again, but anything other than a roped-together run here will be a surprise. Shane Lewis and Jeff Altenburg will have another day to work the Viper's set-up. Perhaps they can get a third marque in the game.

When we saw the withdrawal of the KnightHawk Lola due to "engine problems" at Sears Point, we observed that it was possible that those "problems" were attendant to fitting a new Judd in place of the Nissan motor. We were right. The Roock-supported team is here with a new Judd 3.4 liter V8 to challenge the similarly engined Barbour Reynard.

Correction: We were wrong. It is the Nissan still in the KnightHawk Lola.

Both chassis still are overweight, derived from cars not built originally to the 675 specification, but the class struggles to find a place. John Graham put the Barbour car in its proper place, three seconds back of the Champion Audi, but a good two seconds ahead of the GTS-leading Saleen. Dealing with new power, the KnightHawk Lola trailed the AJR GT Porsches four and a half seconds in trail in the two-car 675 class. Tomorrow's practice and qualifying will likely see the Lola close up some of that distance.

So finally we get to the headliners, the LMP 900 prototypes. Five in the field here, and little we saw today would lead us to believe that the Audi Sport victory string is in any danger. Early in the session, the Panoz cars seemed to be close, even topping the charts, but then the silver Audis found their legs. At the end of the session they had a full six-tenths in hand on the closest Panoz pursuers. Oddly, the Champion Audi in the hands of Herbert and Wallace continued to trail the second of the Panoz by better than two-tenths. Cannot a 2000 spec Audi get out ahead of a 2000 spec Panoz? They did in 2000.

So we are well set-up for Saturday's qualifying. Both GT classes will be close and hard-fought. LMP 675 will be a small class to watch for development. The big prototypes, barring disaster, will extend the Audi Sport win string further into record territory. The Panoz roadsters will hammer around entertainingly with that big V8 sound. Champion will try to find a pace they should have, at least at the head of the "best of the rest."