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American LeMans
ALMS: Outer Limits
They don't come much faster or more scary than Mosport. We look into the art of driving and engineering at the far edge and how Michelin and the ALMS have mastered this daunting circuit.
John Dagys  |  Posted August 29, 2009   Bowmanville, ON
Sweeping corners and elevation changes make setup choices a challenge. (LAT)

Mosport International Raceway is unlike any other track. For decades, some of the best sportscar drivers have tried to tame the beast, while others are left in shock and awe before turning a lap in anger behind the wheel of their race car.

It poses some of the greatest driving and engineering challenges of all the circuits the American Le Mans Series visits. Chassis engineers scratch their heads on how to find the right setup, drivers are forced to push themselves to the outer reaches of comfort, and tires are always clawing the pavement for as much grip as possible. Mosport commands equal parts fear and respect from all those that visit the rolling circuit located just outside of Toronto in Eastern Canada.

Even drivers with the richest racing pedigrees find Mosport to be treacherous, as Porsche factory ace Patrick Long found out when riding with 2003 Indianapolis 500 winner and IndyCar champion Gil de Ferran in a rental car before last year’s race. De Ferran, holder of the closed-course lap record of 241.428 mph in the CART IndyCar series, is no stranger to speed, but on his first laps at Mosport, Long says the brave Brazilian was left speechless.

“I went out to the racetrack before practice and hitched a ride in the rental car with Gil, who had never been here before despite all of his driving,” Long said. “After doing one lap around the track at slow speeds, Gil was pretty quiet. He looked over at me in the passenger seat as he dropped me off on pit lane and said, ‘I think it’s time I retire again!’”

The 2.459-mile, 10-turn circuit is the quickest track on the ALMS calendar. It’s fast-flowing corners with blind crests and little to no run-off areas makes it one of the most challenging for car and driver to master.

“This is one track where there’s no substitute for experience and therefore, every time I go there, I’m a little bit more confident with the place,” said Long, 28, who has made four previous starts at Mosport. “It’s a track that takes a huge amount of focus, but more than focus, it takes respect. It’s so fast and so flowing, but it’s also about the limited runoff areas, which makes it challenging as well.”

There’s little room for error, especially when pushing a car to its limit, right from the downhill sections of Turns 1 and 2, where prototypes are estimated to pull close to 4 G’s, to the uphill entry into Turn 4 and the crest into Moss Corner, before accelerating onto the Mario Andretti straightaway.

LMP1 cars reach speeds up to 175 mph before braking slightly into Turn 8, the circuit’s fastest corner at over 165 mph in a prototype. Then, it’s a quick loop through The Esses and back onto the short, front straight. According to data from the Patron Highcroft Racing Acura team, over 75 percent of a lap is run under full throttle.

The risks drivers must take to achieve a ‘perfect’ lap is huge, and some may try harder than others, but end up paying the consequences. Long experienced the unforgiving nature of Mosport in a baptism-by-fire incident in his rookie year.

Mosport International Raceway is one of the toughest tracks in the world for drivers to master. (John Dagys)
“I certainly think that there’s a handful of us drivers that have tasted the impact zone in some of the higher speed corners,” Long said. “For me, it was my first year there in 2004. I went off backwards over the crest in Turn 2 after JJ Lehto [in the Champion Audi R8] had passed me between Turns 1 and 2. Just at the turn-in to Turn 2, he came at driver’s right and turned into the corner. It was just enough to take the air off the front of my car as I turned in, causing me to catch some marbles. From there, I was just a passenger.

“I think if you’re aware enough, you don’t have to get to that limit. But in my naivety, I was still under the mindset of being a new up-and-comer that thought you can catch every situation. But that accident, having rung my bell the hardest I ever have at Mosport, gave me even more respect for the circuit.”

Long bounced back to claim the GT2 win in 2005 - albeit on the back of a wrecker after his Petersen/White Lightning Porsche suffered suspension failure on the final lap. He was able to overcome his rookie mistake from the previous year thanks to his mental preparations of how and when to attack.

“You have to keep that respect and awareness, but you certainly don’t let it run your weekend,” Long said. “It needs to be in your mindset before getting there, and it needs to remain there. But it can’t be your conscious reality, otherwise it will be a track that would completely intimidate you.”

Those lessons learned helped him move into prototype racing in 2008, as Long made the eye-opening transition to a Porsche RS Spyder, a car that he felt was the most challenging to master around Mosport. Finding the extra tenths of a second in the light and nimble prototype proved to be the tough part, especially when having to deal with traffic and the varying grip levels.

“There were corners such as Turn 1 at Road Atlanta or Turn 1 at Sebring that are every bit as challenging, but as a track that combines so many of those challenging type of corners, it was just flat-out or close to flat-out depending on the corner,” Long said. “It made it very difficult. If you have a partial lift in a GT2 car - backing off 10 or 20 percent from full-throttle - you don’t lose nearly as much time by doing the same thing in a prototype.”

Even the best drivers get it wrong sometimes - On Friday, Gil de Ferran went wide at Moss Corner and got caught out. (John Dagys)
Besides the high-speed and often unforgiving corners, Mosport’s varying surfaces provides challenges for drivers, team engineers and tire engineers, no matter what category. Despite being repaved in 2001, the circuit still retains the characteristics of yesteryear, from abrasive asphalt to concrete patches mixed with marbles.

“The combination of the concrete sections that were added after the original asphalt have their differences in abrasion,” Long explained. “It’s two-fold: One, the grip, and two, how the tire ultimately wears, and how the rubber goes down differently between the sections. I’m sure there’s even differences in the layers of asphalt too. So you’ve got many different surfaces built up, and you add curbing that has been either reproduced or updated, and there’s different versions of curbs that are usable or not.

“Obviously tire wear is an important thing. With the Michelin tires we have, it’s the same quest: You want to go for the best performance but the tire’s longevity is certainly a huge focus for us. If we’re ever not sure, we tend to err towards the conservative side to make sure we’re going to be there in the end.”

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