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Texas Motor Speedway

Leather Center

04/03/2001

Race Morning

Report

Fort Worth, Texas--A clear day and bright sun greets us on raceday morning. Unlike last year's Texas round, this is not bad news. At this time of the year, even a sunny day is expected to reach temperatures only in the middle sixties Fahrenheit. I have no idea what the attendance is now three hours before the start of the ALMS feature. Just be assured that it is way beyond any of those at Las Vegas and way behind Sebring. This track actually has infield course stands, reflecting a greater understanding of road course racing than most other oval racing facility managements.

Given the minimal amount of bent hardware in yesterday's practice and qualifying, most teams have the polishing rags out this morning, preparing to look as good as they can on Speedvision.
The sort-of-big news this morning is the banishment of the #2 Audi Sport NA R8 to the back of the grid, for a diffuser that exceeded the maximum height above the flat bottom of the car allowed by ACO rules. Such infractions are frequent enough not to shake up the world of racing, particularly when the result will be little more than the show "For the Fans" of the fastest car in the race carving its way through the field from the drop of the green flag. Audi's Head of Sport, Dr. Wolfgang Ulrich, put it for all of us, "We look forward to watching Frank fight his way through the field in the race."

The first event of the day was a setback for the series organizer as our own John Brooks beat Dr. Panoz into the gate with a dazzling lane change and late braking maneuver just before the finish.

Commentary continues to be that the field is small, but running to ACO rules will probably always relegate a race on such an early date to such numbers, particularly in just the second season after the significant rule changes that followed the Mercedes aerial circus. Too many teams are still in the midst of building and testing cars. Daimler-Chrysler's LMP is an example, as is Saleen. In fact, had not Panoz and BMW been willing to contest this round with their previous models, it might well have been worse.

One who did get it done was George Trinkler, owner of the #17 GT Corvette C5-R. "We have been building this car for two years. We haven't had time to develop the car and we're using a 5.7 liter engine which is an endurance engine. We're going to try to do the best we can and we really need to finish. The ALMS is the most level playing field in racing today. Everybody is treated equally whether they're big or small, and that's big in my mind. This is where we want to be." Trinkler is on course to create a car that can be raced competitively by customers, with a solid showing in yesterday's qualifying, clearly outclassing the much better known Callaway C12 effort, and putting a few Porsche GT3-Rs behind him.

Elsewhere in GT, one of the two classes in which we will get interesting racing (the other being prototype), BMW's PTG qualified yesterday on their hardest compound, a tire they know they can race with today. Bill Auberlen commented on the effect of the tire choice, "I saw the other cars start out fast and come back. We started slow and kept chipping away. A little bit of heat in the track tomorrow and we will be looking good. Boris Said was somewhat more disappointed in his result. "The M3 is better than my result," was his wry observation. With the JJ Lehto / Jorg Muller #42 BMW Motorsport M3 also in the Bavarian mix for the challengers, it could be a good race at the front of the class--unless of course Alex Job and company have been holding something back.

In prototype, we will have a race first in the move back to the front of the Biela-Pirro Audi R8. Don't be surprised if it only takes about two laps to get back to the prototype pack, but then it will become more difficult. Frank can expect no favors from the Panoz cars he will then encounter, and perhaps not from the other Audis either.

The car to watch is the new Panoz LMP07. It looks good and sounds good, but yesterday it also showed it had some fight in it, forcing a serious effort from Audi Sport. Look for the Champion Audi to get faster through the day as Schroeder and Wallace get more comfortable in the R8.

"A Few Good Cars." Remindful of the US Marine's pitch for "A Few Good Men."