Laguna Seca - 09/09/2001   Andy Wallace Mosport and Mid-Ohio   Andy Wallace and Johnny Herbert succeeded with that first podium at Portland, so what would Mosport and Mid-Ohio have in store? We looked really competitive from the beginning of the Canadian meeting. We had a new engine in the car, the R8 was working really well, and we were both looking forward to that type of circuit which is so exhilarating for a driver. I like Mosport a lot. It has four very high speed corners, and that's what is missing from a lot of the European tracks. Fast corners are a hoot, especially in an R8. The traffic becomes a problem of course, because there's a huge speed differential between us and the GT cars, if you meet them at these corners. It was my turn to qualify this weekend. I was feeling confident as the car was really well balanced in the last session before qualifying, and I managed a 1m 9.3s on a virtually, but not totally, clear lap. In qualifying itself we picked up a lot of understeer from somewhere, and so I could only manage a disappointing 1m 9.7s, leaving us in 4th place. Of course it poured with rain on race morning. I looked at the sky when I woke up, and it was very dark everywhere. You could anticipate that it was going to rain all day long; I thought I'd done all my really wet weather stuff for the year at Le Mans... We added some rear wing for the race, but the first problem was to sort out in my own mind how I was going to make the best possible rolling start. I spent the two reconnaissance laps exploring all the options. I tried first gear and had loads of wheel spin, second gear and still lots of wheelspin. In the dry in the R8, you use about three quarter throttle with brake on, then come off the brake and nail it - you set off like a rocket, but you daren't try that in the wet. So I was practising first gear, second gear, third gear, some throttle, full throttle - every combination. Of course it was my luck that there was a large puddle on the left just as we were released, but I hung onto fourth into the first corner. Approaching Turn 4 at over 150mph we were faced with a whole load of water on the track. Dindo spun out of the lead, Jan Magnussen missed him, I spun into the gravel, Franck Lagorce spun into the barrier, just missing us both… but luckily I hadn't touched anything. I just drove out of the sodden gravel - in last place. The Safety Car came out of course, so I pitted for a precautionary check of the rear end, and we took the decision to change from the 'maxi' wets to standard Michelin wets, as the track dries quickly at Mosport. That was a good decision. I rejoined still at the back...and then proceeded to pass everyone and take the lead! I was really enjoying myself. It was relatively easy to pass cars initially, and became more difficult as I got nearer the front. I got four of them before we reached the start-finish line, which is entirely within the rules of course. You're on the radio the whole time, and once you get the call that the green has been waved, you can go, even if you're two or three corners short of the line. Butch was pretty quick in the Dyson car, but I got by him and got up to Magnussen in the Panoz - and he pitted as I got near, so I was in the lead of the race. He was in for slicks. It was drying out fast, and I had run out of damp patches to drive through, to keep the tyres alive. You can feel the car moving around as the wets heat up (because the tread bocks are getting too hot). So I ducked into the pits, for slicks, and for Johnny to take over. It was my call for slicks, which is always a difficult one if you're not the guy going out to use them - but it was the right decision. Johnny was out in second place, took the lead and looked really secure ahead of Pirro. Our turn this time? We had one more stop to do, and we still had that understeer - so we had to change the left front tyre. The Joest car didn't. That put us back to second, but Johnny put in that drive which took him all the way up to two seconds from the leader. We all know what happened then, and it left the car with a hole in the monocoque, but we had to go for the win. Johnny was doing a great job, catching the factory car like that. Going off is what happens sometimes when you're right on the limit. A result would have been good for us in the points chase, but we were all behind him - we had to go for the win. That left us with a problem for Mid-Ohio, which was just a few days later. Luckily we had a 'show car' at Mosport, with a tub identical to our race chassis. The Champion Racing guys started work there and then, tearing parts off the damaged chassis and building them into the spare. Almost everything had to be changed over, and they did an amazing job, all inside two days. It had to be that quick, bcause the truck had to leave on Wednesday morning to make it to Mid-Ohio. The truck arrived on Wednesday evening, and we were ready to go on Thursday. More rain. It was pouring. I was first out, and to be honest, I was afraid of putting the car off the road, after the team had worked their butts off to have us ready. I therefore took it carefully, but in the wet, the car felt really good straight away. I was second fastest, just a tenth off the best time. Johnny put slicks on as the track dried, and he went out and was quickest. We were obviously thrilled with this sort of start to the meeting, but Mid-Ohio saw relatively little track time available, maybe because of all the other races going on, and we had an hour less than usual - a single session on Friday, and then it was straight into Qualifying. On Friday morning it was dry. We had horrendous understeer, just horrendous. Of course we were chasing it all the time, but we only had an hour. We still had it for Qualifying, and Johnny was disappointed to be over a second off the pole time. We planned some more changes for the race. We reckoned a lot of it was down to the the greenness of the track. Each time some rubber went down, a rain storm washed it away. Even in the race - the early going at least - the track was still very green. I started, and for 30 or so minutes, I had masses of understeer. Klaus Graf and... ....James (Weaver) just swallowed me up. Then it started to improve, as the rubber went down. I could see a black line appearing, and the car started to respond better by the lap. My lap times came down by one and a half seconds as the understeer reduced, and I caught James up again. Then it was time to hand over to Johnny. We were very careful not to get another penalty for assistance at the pit stop. But what we didn't know was that we'd somehow knocked off the pit-lane speed limiter during the driver-change, and by the time Johnny had noticed that something wasn't right, he was already 11 kph over the limit. So that was a stop and go straight away. I'd also incurred a penalty, for an incident just before pitting, when I was lapping the Saleen - I went up the inside under braking, but he shut the door on me, and although I hit the brakes, contact was unavoidable. We were given a stop and go for that too. Highly unfair in my opinion. Anyway, so Johnny began his shift with a pair of pit-stops. As if all that wasn't enough excitment for one race, the car then developed a misfire, requiring a further stop for a new "gismo". At this point we were two laps down. The car was handling well though, with the track surface now coated with a generous layer of rubber. In fact, Johnny reported that it felt much better than in qualifying. We got one lap back with a good call from crew chief Brad Kettler during a yellow, and we finished up in fifth place. Not the kind of result we had been hoping for, after all the effort that was put in by the Team, just to get there. But after the events of the day, it was better than nothing. Next up are more superb race tracks. It really doesn't get much better than driving an Audi R8 on a great race track - am I lucky or what? I still believe we can win one of these last two - Laguna Seca and the Petit Le Mans. The Californian track is a real thrill to drive around, with a mix of fast flowing sections and elevation changes. It's also notorious for its lack of grip, so in that respect it's like a "green" Mid-Ohio. If we run the car as we did in Ohio, we'll have that understeer again, so we're working hard on ways to get around that. I'll be flying to California on Wednesday, and spend Thursday at the track with the Team. We start running Friday. I can't wait. I'm sure there will be an excellent crowd there, because they saw a great race last year, and this year's promises to be even better. I'll keep you posted on what happens in that one, before the last ALMS race at Road Atlanta. Andy Wallace link Copyright ©2000-©2023 TotalMotorSport