Not really knowing what the car would do when I drove it didn't really concern me, as I had a lap time set in my mind, and I would just deal with what came to me as I drove. In a sense, I just let my instincts take over, and went for the ride. It seemed to work as I put it fourth on the grid, just ahead of the
BMW and Gunnar Jeannette, my team-mate. This pissed Gunnar off a lot, as he was sure he had me this time. He got out of the car and shook my hand - and called me a bast**d.... twice, but it was all in good fun. We have a little thing going in the team as the car that gets beat in qualifying has to pay a dollar to the other car. This goes back to the LMP days and I am pleased that not many dollars have left my hand! Sebastian Bourdais, who was the third driver on our car for the weekend, even came up to me and said that he was impressed - and that meant a lot coming from him.
Scotty Maxwell started the race and things were looking good for a while, but then he was going slower and slower. He was complaining about the rear tyres 'going away' and we were quite concerned as he had only done ten laps of a 50-lap stint. As it turned out, this was our biggest problem and, due to him dropping back, the old pace car came out and guess what... .we lost a lap!
However, we kept going and decided that we had to look after our tyres, so we set a slower lap time in the race. This helped and, although we were slower, everyone else seemed to have trouble as well. It was a very manic race, as the prototypes clearly thought that we weren't there. So many times, the GT2 cars got hit and I had two moments on the grass as they dive-bombed me. I can't really complain, though, as, when I was in a prototype, I did the same thing...... Karma in play here - I have to get back into a prototype!
