The Rose Cup races, Portland Or.

Back home again after trip #3 to the States. Before sitting down to write this, I have re-read my reports from previous races, and realised how much I have written about. I just hope that there are some people out there enjoying what they read. I do get a few comments from people at the circuits, but it would be good to hear from anybody else who wants to find out more, or tell me what they want to hear about.

So episode three from the USA, and I returned to Portland, for my last race to qualify for the runoffs. Simple job to do. Qualify and finish the national race. Easy……?

We had been testing the car on the Thursday, and been producing good lap times. The set-up was ok, but as all drivers know, it is never right, and you find yourself always whining to your engineers that there is ‘…..not enough grip, I need more grip…’. My engineer Eric duly tried a few things and we were fastest in Friday practice by quite a margin. Full of confidence we prepared for qualifying. The Oregon weather however decided to make things a little more interesting by raining 30 mins before our session. We went out on the track with wet tyres and set-up, but came in after 3 laps to change back to slicks. A quick 4 min change of all tyres, (That’s fast for an S2 with only one jack), and I managed to build up speed as the track dried. I left some room in front of me before what I knew would be the last lap of the session, and managed to put the car on the pole by some distance, and even out qualified some formula Atlantics, DSR’s and CSR’s.

The race on the Saturday was dry, and I was happy that if I could stay out of any first corner incidents, I should be OK. The first corner was carnage!. A CSR decided that the race was to be won in the first corner, got a little excited and caused some cars to exit the race with a lot of $$$$’s worth of damage. I managed just to get round the ensuing incidents, but i immediately realised that the car was lacking a lot of grip. I struggled to get the car within 3 seconds of my Friday practice time and it was only time before other S2’s caught me up. Jeff Litrell, managed to make a pass, but then failed to pull out a lead, and within a couple of laps I was back in front again. David Ferguson in his Van Diemen, however was not so generous, he passed me and managed to extend a slight lead before the Chequered fell. Congrats’ to Dave, drove a good race, and spoiled my day!

Post race meeting with engineer, ‘…..absolutely no grip……engine also down on power along the straight….’. Scratching of heads and a look at the data from the car, found that yes we were down on straight line speed, and the g-force figures were down from previous runs. The tyres looked unlike they should have after a race, and felt very hard, so we decided to put on a new set of boots for the next qualifying which was about 1 hour after the finish of the race.

What a difference, we had a car again!. Managed to set a new qualifying lap record of 1min 18.030 secs. That was 3 secs faster than the race 1 hour before. The engine was still down on power, but we were on the pole again, and I was now qualified for the runoffs.

Sundays race, was a tussle between myself and Dave Ferguson. My car lacked the power down the straight, but pulled out again through the turns. I just managed to hold off for the win, to even the weekend.

We are now qualified for the runoffs and are pleased that we have made genuine improvements with the car. I believe that we will take a car to the runoffs that will this time be able to compete with the best S2’s in the country. If we can get a good balance and keep a good set of tyres to run on, we will be very competitive.

The next time I will be in a car is back in the UK, for the Oulton Park round of the Duratec Championship. In the meantime I have a busy work schedule, and will try and earn a few more pennies!.

Hope you have enjoyed these reports from the States. I will try and also keep my UK reports up to date.

Cheers

Nik Johnson