Pruett: Disappointing Montreal Weekend
Well, it was a disappointing weekend in Montreal to say the least. With a 10th-place finish, we’ve now fallen into a tie for second-place, five points out of first.
The most disappointing part of this weekend was that our No. 01 TELMEX Lexus was a very good car in dry conditions and we were only .012 away from winning the pole. Unfortunately, you don’t get points for qualifying and you don’t get to choose what conditions you race in.
One thing is for sure, I’ll be happy if we don’t see rain again this year. We’ve raced in the wet twice this year and those were our worst two finishes of the season other than when we were taken out of the race at VIR. What complicated this weekend was the fact that it was another one of the two-hour events where strategy and luck are a little bit more important than in a the normal two-hour, 45-minute sprint race. If you do make a mistake, it’s awfully hard to overcome it.
We fell back to third early, but at that point, we were just being cautious due to the pre-race rains that gave us a wet track. Early on, we switched to slicks with most of the field and came back in third. On our next pit stop, we made the decision to go back to rains as some drizzle fell, but it stopped and started to dry out fairly quickly and we fell back some. That forced us to be a little more aggressive with our decisions the rest of the day.
At that point, it seemed like the racing Gods decided it just wasn’t going to be our day. It seemed like every time we switched to slicks, it would start to rain on the next lap, and every time we’d switch to wets, the rain would stop. I have to give credit to the SunTrust guys, they made the right calls and lasted out the conditions a little bit longer and wrapped up the race when they stayed out on wets when just about everyone else (including us) had made a last stop to switch to slicks when the track started to dry. A couple of laps later, it began to rain again and they jumped right back into championship contention.
I guess the weekend just supports two things I’ve said all along. First, it’s the wildest season I can remember in Grand-Am. Usually the championship winning team will go an entire season and have maybe only one major problem; this year, problems for the leaders seems to be the norm. We’ll struggle one weekend, the No. 10 will struggle the next and then the No. 99 will have a problem. Hopefully, this will be the last time for us.
The second point is that this championship is going down to the last lap of the last race of the year. Our Ganassi/Lexus team, the GAINSCO guys and the SunTrust team are all too good not to be in this thing heading into Homestead.
Saturday’s finish does change our approach to the last two races. All year, we’ve focused on doing what we have to do and finishing on the podium. Now we have to go in looking to win each race and if we do, we’ll have another championship. We still hold our destiny in our own hands, but it’s certainly going to be challenge.
Stay tuned – these last two races are going to be wild.
