Well, it sure feels good writing this column saying we won instead of saying we are getting close to winning. If you remember from my last message, I said that we were close to winning - and I was right...!
The win could not have come at a better time, with our team sponsor, Patron Tequila, also sponsoring the race in Long Beach, and Honda being based just down the road. Long Beach is the jewel in the American Le Mans Series crown and for Highcroft to win its first race there felt pretty special.
It didn't start off that well, with Thursday's practice showing us 1.7 seconds off the pace. The car just didn't have the grip and we really thought we had a better set-up than the one from St Pete, where we did so well. Not so. On Friday, we went back to the St Pete set-up and improved to 0.7secs behind just before qualifying. It still wasn't enough, but at least we were heading in the direction.
I got myself into a really good state of mind for qualifying and felt good going into it. My first flying lap was a quick one, a 1min 11.4secs which stunned the team as we were miles quicker than everyone else at that stage. Eventually, I dropped to P2, then P3, so I backed off, had a think about it and went for it again. I knew I was on a good one and didn't look at the delta time, which tells me where I am quicker or slower on the track, because I knew. I went down the back straight, braked too late and promptly ran out of talent - and into the wall...!
Only then did I look down on the delta time, and found I was four-tenths up on my best time - a lap good enough for pole as I was only a tenth off. Still, it showed that we'd got the car back to being good, and I was really looking forward to the race.
Scott started the race, and did really well as he was still learning the track at that point. He didn't get a lot of laps before the race, as I was in the car most of the time - but the same thing happened to me last year when Stefan qualified.
