It was really a bit of a bizarre race at Watkins Glen. We normally run two-hour and 45-minute sprint races, but Friday’s race was just two hours and that, along with the timing of the full-course cautions, really resulted in a variety of strategies out there.
Truthfully, if you were watching at home and could figure out what was going on in terms of pit strategy and who was doing what, you’re one up on me – and I was in the race car! Teams were fueling at different times, topping off, etc. It really opened up the race when the first caution came out 27 minutes into the race – right on the cusp to be able to make driver changes, and some teams opted to pit immediately and others waited a lap or two to be able to make the change under yellow. It’s too bad because Memo (Rojas) was running away from the field before the yellow came out.
All in all, our TELMEX Chip Ganassi Racing Lexus was a pretty good race car. Going into the race, we knew we had a couple of areas where we were fighting the car a bit. Normally, you can get an idea of which direction you want to go during the race and make adjustments when you pit, but with the shorter time and the variance in strategies we made the decision to just get in and get out as fast as possible – and in the end, it proved to be the right move.
With all of that pit strategy talk, there was still some really good racing happening on the race track. We had a real good battle with the No. 12 Porsche for awhile. They were able to make that car pretty wide at times, but we were just trying to wearing them, trying to stay on them all the time. Finally, we forced them into a couple of mistakes and we were able to get by them and at that point we were able to focus on going after the race lead.
After moving into second, we made a pretty good run at the No. 76 car for the win, but Ricardo (Zonta) ran a great race and they had a great race car. We just didn’t have enough to get by without putting our No. 01 TELMEX Lexus in a risky spot on the race track. We fought them as hard as we could, but we also had to be cautious in traffic. We’re just not in position to take chances and, conversely, they had nothing to lose. It did get a little interesting there in traffic though. We were able to pull up next to them a couple of times and we banged a little bit side-by-side, but that’s the hard racing that Grand-Am is really all about.
You may get tired of hearing me say it, but the goal every week is to be on the podium and if you do, you’ll have a great shot at the title. You have to get as many as you can without putting yourself in harm’s way and in the end, we did what we had to do.
In a championship race, there are so many pieces that have to come together. Pirelli gave some very good tires, we had a great engine again from Lexus and the whole Chip Ganassi Racing team did a great job, both preparing the car and in the pits. And we couldn’t do any of it without TELMEX. Take away any piece of the puzzle and you’re in trouble.
There’s still a long way to go, though. We now have a four-point lead over the GAINSCO guys and a 14-point lead over Wayne Taylor’s SunTrust team. It’s far from over and it’s hard to think this one isn’t going down to the last lap at Homestead.
Thanks for stopping in and we’ll give you an update before Montreal.
