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Not For a Lack of Effort

Jun 6, 2010
The second longest event of the 2010 Rolex Grand Am Sports Car season had plenty of obstacles for the #8 Corsa Car Care/Dynacor Media car. With their 7th place finish at Watkins Glen International Raceway the season reaches the halfway point. Scottish born driver Ryan Dalziel still sits in 2nd place in the overall championship while teammate Mike Forest of Canada sits in 5th, fighting a close battle for 3rd. For this endurance race the team brought in Australian driver James Davidson who got his first taste of long distance sports car racing.

The team was coming off a season high, 2nd place in Lime Rock on Monday May 31th. The 17 crew members of the Starworks Motorsport team had only 3 days to pack up, travel across New York State, set up again and prepare the team's two race cars for the 6 hour event. They met that challenge and shifted into race mode as Friday hosted the practice and qualifying sessions for Saturday's race.

The weekend brought hardship to both of the team's cars. The #7 car had a shunt in practice which took the remainder of the day and night to repair. While the #8 car sat in the top 5 in practice, they received a faulty set of tires for qualifying, which ruined their chances for a good qualifying position.

Unfortunately, it turned out the tires were only part of the problem. During the final stages of pre-race prep the team discovered a part of the drive train had started to crack and needed replacing. It's not uncommon for the drive train to wear, but it occurred earlier than expected and the timing was awful. It was discovered at 10:30pm and requires the entire rear end of the car to be disassembled to replace. The crew worked all night and got 1 hour of sleep, but by morning the #8 car was back up and running. They rebounded by setting the 2nd fastest time in Saturday morning's warm up. This was some satisfaction for the team as they had been evacuated by 2 false fire alarms in the hotel Thursday night.

Optimistic they could make up ground over the course of the race they set out to win their fourth ‘most improved position' award of the season. Forest passed the first competitor on lap 2, but not before losing 15 seconds on lap 1 behind the slower car. From there the race settled into a really quick pace with no yellow flags coming out even though 2 short rain showers that occurred around the 1 hour mark. The rain did however, affect Forest who was caught out when the showers came through quickly, significantly dropping the turn 1 grip. He locked up the front tires and ran wide; the only damage that was done was to the stopwatch.

Soon after, Forest handed the car off to Dalziel who continued to fend off the leaders in an effort to remain on the lead lap. After defending his 1 second lead for over 30 minutes, the #8 eventually fell a lap down.

Over the next 4 hours the team worked to get the lap back under a full course yellow during the middle phase of the race. Due to the length of the course they were unable to regain the lap on their first attempt. Tensions ran high as the entire pit wall watched the #6 car drive around the track trying to get to a fire station to douse the flames coming out of the rear of their car. Although the car ended up badly burned the driver, Michael Valiante escaped unharmed.

On the third full course yellow of the day, the team employed a different strategy in trying to reclaim the lap. As the leaders pitted for the final time the #8 car was waved by the pace car as is granted by the ‘wave-by' rule where the pace car must pick up the overall leader, allowing cars that didn't pit and are a lap down to the leader to regain a lap. It was a short yellow meaning there was not enough time after the wave-by to pit for the needed fuel to finish the race. The #8 team was praying for a yellow to occur in the next 14 laps before they ran out of fuel which would put them down a lap if they had to pit under green flag. Their prayers were answered when the fourth and final yellow occurred allowing them to get the needed ‘splash & go.'

On the ensuing restart Davidson had contact with the #75 Krohn Racing car which resulted in a spin for the #75 and a drive through penalty for the #8. Even with the penalty, Davidson raced hard to the finish to finish on the lead lap in 7th position.

It is still unclear which contact caused the suspension damage to the #8 Starworks car. Around the middle part of the race the car experienced a significant drop in performance. As became evident after the race, the #8 Corsa Car Care/Dynacor media car came very close to the same fate as the #6 car. The car was bottoming on the left rear corner and eventually wore through the floor. At the end of the race when the car parked in pit lane a fuel leak was discovered. Over the last several laps the bottoming had worn into one of the fuel lines and could have caused a massive fire.

"It is always the difficult weekend where you learn what you made of, individually and as a group. The attitude under the Starworks tent was really positive despite the numerous up's and down's experienced this weekend. The race left us wanting more but given we are in contention for the overall championship it is important that we came away with some points. I felt terrible for that lock up and giving the car to Ryan in that position. He put up such a good fight for us to stay on the lead lap but the brakes just were not there for us today. Well maybe we got the biggest brake of all when that fuel issue we discovered after the race didn't cause a bigger problem" Forest said. "The crew deserves all the credit for working over 40 hours in 2 days with a 1 hour break."

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