Since my last column, I have been busy racing at Elkhart Lake and Mosport in Canada, tearing up the tarmac... well, trying at least!
I was so looking forward to Elkhart, as it is the best track in North America - in my view anyway - and I felt pretty confident that the Highcroft car would be quick there and able to challenge the mighty Penske Porsches. How wrong was I?
When we got going, it was clear that we had to dig deep to be even close to the Penskes - and the Audis were in a different league this time as their huge horsepower advantage would make them disappear from the whole field. After the first day's practice, we were 2.5 seconds off the Porches...
We banged our heads together in the engineering room to see what we could do... hmmmm. We came up with a cunning plan to find a way of closing the gap and were somewhat confident that it would work but, until the next practice session, we weren't sure. I have to say that it is funny how you can convince yourselves the direction to go that will be the killer set-up, but the proof is always in the stopwatch.
Well, the plan worked and we were much closer, with a gap of just one second. We knew it would be difficult to catch the Porsches as we still have a few issues with the chassis that slows us down but, considering these, we are doing really well. It was my turn to qualify, and how fun it is to push the car to the extreme around that place. I did the best I could and we qualified behind the two Audis and both Penskes, so 'best of the rest' if you like. This time the gap was 0.6secs and it would have been closer as I lost three tenths locking up the fronts on my quickest lap. It still wouldn't have been enough to beat the yellow cars but, still, the team did a great job getting us that close.
