Scott Pruett enjoyed a hectic weekend as he took part in the EMCO Gears Classic Rolex Series race at Mid-Ohio, before jetting off to the Toyota/Savemart 300 Sprint Cup Series race at Sonoma, where he competed in the #41 Target car for Chip Ganassi Racing.
Here is his diary of the race weekend...
Saturday 21 June:
Saturday started awfully early as we landed in Ohio late Friday/early Saturday morning and I ended up arriving at the hotel right around 1:30am, which was actually earlier than we anticipated.
After a few hours sleep, I met the team in the lobby at 7am to head to the race track. We talked about a few things we wanted to try and prepared for the first session at 9:30. Our #01 Telmex Lexus was actually very good, although, we never really had many clear laps for it to show up in our times. In fact, the car was good enough that we incorporated some of the things from that session into our race set-up.
As race time drew near, we were confident that we had a good car, but the radar reports weren't nearly as good. There was a storm that was coming through and projections had it hitting the track right around the starting time for the race – and did it ever.
It wasn't more than a handful of laps into the race when it started to pour. I have to admit, I hate racing in the rain. It's miserable for the drivers and it's miserable for our fans who have to sit outside in it. The one bright side is it really does result in some exciting racing. If you watched some of the racing in the early going today and didn't enjoy it, you're not a race fan.
My team-mate, Memo Rojas, really did a great job in some awful conditions. He took the lead early and led for much of the first half of the race. But when it was all said and done, most of came down to how the strategy broke and deciding just how much risk you wanted to take. In our case, we had a pretty sizeable lead in the points race and it just didn't make a sense to take a lot of chances. Cars were spinning off everywhere and the one thing we couldn't afford was to end up in the gravel trap.
With the way the cautions fell, I got into the car with a little under an hour left, coming out in 13th after our driver change. We made it up to eighth as the race ended under the eighth full-course yellow of the day. Not exactly what we hoped for, but by staying out of trouble, we actually extended our points lead to 37 points as we finished up the first half of the season.
Now it's time to head back to the airport and go back to California. We're expecting to get in around midnight or 12:30am local time. I'll head back to the hotel and get some rest and then head out to the track early tomorrow. At that point, we'll make the final decisions on which direction to head for the race. After hearing that my team-mate, Juan Montoya, ran well this afternoon, we're optimistic for tomorrow. The key is to score as many points as we can to make sure the #41 Target car stays comfortably in the top-35 in points.
One down and one to go!
Sunday 22 June :
Immediately after the Mid-Ohio race, it was time to head back to the airport and we arrived into NAPA between 11:30 and midnight Saturday night. I was able to get to bed before 1am and get some needed rest.
