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Joel Feinberg and Chris Hall continue to drive their Dodge Viper within an inch of its life, but the time sheets only reflect a team at the bottom of the pile. With a new car, new team, and new tires, the challenges of making it to the top are daunting. ( » More Photos
A Primetime Challenge
Life at the back of the American Le Mans grid is a bit of a mystery for most people that follow the series. The cars, teams, and drivers rarely get mentioned during the race broadcasts (unless they’re in the way of the leaders or have been involved in an accident), and as time passes, many of the teams are largely forgotten by the media and by the causal fan.
Yet for those of us fortunate enough to follow the series round by round, finding a good trackside vantage point to watch the entire field at work can deliver some privileged insights into the less privileged teams that make up the tail end of the ALMS grid.
One team in particular, Primetime Race Group, has been a joy to watch all year, but as their Hankook-shod GT2 Dodge Viper is often the slowest car in the field, many have assumed the team and drivers are delivering a sub-par performance.
The pleasure in watching team owner and driver Joel Feinberg or his co-driver Chris Hall drive their bulky Viper comes in the form of seeing two talented pilots attempt to wrestle and wrangle a car around a track when it usually refuses to comply with their commands. It doesn’t want to stop like the class leading GT2 cars, nor does it want to turn or accelerate like them.
The heavy front-engined V10 beast was never intended to take on smaller cars like the 911 or F430, but that hasn’t deterred Feinberg from attempting to make the Viper into a legitimate challenger. But adding to their speed deficit is their development partnership with Hankook tires. The ‘Kook’s have made great strides so far this year, but the gap to Michelin is such that a team like Primetime is still many seconds arrears to a rival GT2 car on the French rubber.
As their own tire partners work methodically through new compounds and constructions to test, Feinberg and Hall are left to drive each race as if it was their last, and even while putting in a number of stirring performances, their efforts get written off because of poor finishing positions.
For Feinberg, the efforts to build an ALMS team from scratch and to run a unique car as are as important as winning. It's not so much about winning for him, it's about how he wins. Doing so with his own operation serves as Joel's greatest motivation. (Pho » More Photos
These are the struggles and frustrations of teams at the back of the grid. Feinberg and Hall could put in the best drive of all the teams combined in an ALMS race, but you wouldn't know it unless you were inside the car with them.
For Feinberg, the pain of not being able to show their true potential is tempered by the other lessons his fledgling team is learning about endurance racing.
“The goals coming in at this season were, obviously, to develop a car that wasn't meant for the series, but was going to be allowed in with IMSA standing close by. They were going to try and convert it into the GT2 car. We started out on Michelin’s and thought we had a good deal going with that and that we could be competitive and the goal at the beginning of the season was to finish in the top 5. I would have been arrogant to say, "Oh, I'm going to put the car on podium," where truthfully I would just be happy with the top-5, knowing what I was up against. What we've found so far with the season was a great 12 hour race at Sebring where we finished 5th.
“So right out of the box, to meet a partial goal, was pretty good. We ran a car for basically 12 one-hour races that... I mean, that's twice a season of what that car is meant to do outside the ALMS. So going from there and to the street circuits, we felt really good about going forward and as you know we've had some issues with some crashing and some parts not holding up, and in the middle of all that, did a tire change over to Hankook's and entered into a partnership with them to develop their American race tire here in the American Le Mans Series. And that's been kind of a slow process. They're not ones to just go and throw out the greatest thing that they think is gonna work; just to put themselves up there with everyone else. They want to build something slowly over a season and make the right decision and choices and take it step by step. So from my perspective, that's great and all and I'm happy to be a part of that. But we also are here to race. We're racing at the track. We're racing at the shop. We're racing every day at some point; we're racing to continue this. So mid-season, I'm a little discouraged at where we're at and where we stack up against some of the other cars, but all in all, if you look at the times that we've been on the track and the segments of races that we've been able to stay out. We've run pretty well considering what we are. The car is, for a lack of a better term…the car's a pig. I mean, it's not meant to fight off a Porsche or a Ferrari."
With a car Feinberg is quick to describe as a ‘pig,’ why not make the switch to one of the purebred GT2 options available to him? “The heart of my philosophy was to build a team and build a car at the same time that can really be competitive in the next couple of years once the dust settles. There's not another team out there that's developing a car the way we've been developing it. Everyone else has some type of bigger support, whether its factory support or a car builder support, chassis builder, motor builder, or whatever it may be. We're running a Dodge spec race car with a Dodge motor without an ounce of support from them, and our tires are new tires from a new tire company that's trying to do the same thing we're doing. So we're in the same boat as they are and together we're trying to build both of our products and brands at the same time.”
Besides dedicating 2008 as a development year for his team, Feinberg is also motivated by entering a unique car and the efforts of making it into a winner. “It's all my decision and I'm a very competitive person. I like a challenge. I like being the underdog. That's a lot of what drives me. If I just showed up with my checkbook and went to a Ferrari or a Porsche, it would just be a matter of "Am I gonna spend more money than the other guys?" And I'm not gonna do that. I don't feel that that's what racing is all about. Unfortunately for some teams, the further up you go, that does come into play. He who spends the most money is probably gonna win. I love racing, but not enough to just throw stupid money at it to say that I won. I'd rather get satisfaction of taking nothing and turning it into something.”
As the team adds experience from every race
“Well, we're driving at the absolute limit right now. There have been points where I've had to come in and make changes in the middle of a race because the car won't respond anymore. I'm giving it all it will handle and it's not reacting. Why are we at the back of the grid? We come week after week to different tracks in our first year with this car and we don't have any data to rely on. So basically every race we get to- right up until the flag goes green and sometimes into the race- is a test for us. We'll leave one track feeling that we nailed the setup and "Don't touch it! Don't touch it! It's perfect" and we're going to run it just like that and then we get to the next track and we're twice as slow as we were the week before.
“It just happened at Lime Rock, a little twisty one mile sub-minute track, we have the car pretty well planted where you could get on it in the corners and drive it hard and even with all the dirt and the new pavement there, we were still able to drive it hard and I told the crew, I said, "The car is perfect. Don't touch it." But we get here to a completely different track and a completely different surface and the car doesn't do anything the same as it did last week. So that's to be expected when you go track to track, but... every week we're starting over with the car, where some of the other teams say, "Well last year we did this and it didn't work, so let's try this." Other teams test here throughout the off-season, throughout the downtimes of the season. We're underprivileged when it comes to that.”
Feinberg’s found that getting the maximum performance from his Viper requires a Zen-like degree of focus and intensity to have any hope of keeping up with the back of the GT2 pack.
“It's total concentration throughout the whole stint. When I'm in the car, I know I'm breathing but sometimes I have to remind myself to breathe normally. You get in instances where you're so concentrated that you're almost holding your breath while you're driving and bullets are constantly being shot at you by the LMP cars. Sometimes you see them, sometimes you don't. And then there's the faster GT cars; it's the same thing. But there is not a point in that car where we are ever relaxed. I think we're one of the only, if not one of the few, cars that don’t have air conditioning in the car and we're one of the few cars that have the front motor. So to have that motor up front and no air conditioning, that's over 130, 140 degrees in that cockpit. It's hard work.
A development partnership with Hankook Tires has been a major boost for Primetime, but until their tires offer the same grip as the GT2 class leading Michelin's, Feinberg and Hall will be sliding and skating in the corners. (Photo: Marshall Pruett) » More Photos
“I might have one hand on the wheel at times, but that's only because I'm having to shift in the mid-corner to get through it. It's nonstop. When we get out of that car, we are beat. We get it handed to us for sure. And that's every time we get into the car. That's how we drive it. It's ten-tenths or nothing. If you make a mistake in that car, there's no quick fix. I was behind one of the Tafel Ferrari’s the other day it got a little oversteer off line and then you see the traction control come in and straighten the car back out. It didn't hold it there and wait for it to grab. It straightened right back out, where I'm in there -- opposite lock on the wheel -- holding it sideways…trying to catch it the other way. And if I'm not in 100% control of the car at all times, I end up in a wall. I wish I could make it look as easy as a Ferrari on Michelin’s does, but that’s not our reality. We’re fighting to maintain control every inch of the track on every lap, but no one gets to see that.”
Another owner/driver might be tempted to sell his operation and use the proceeds to secure a seat with a Risi or flying Lizard, but Feinberg sees more than the dollars he’s invested in the program—he’s fiercely committed to the men and women that make up the core of Primetime Race Group.
“My team is the greatest team here. I wouldn't trade them for anything. They're the hardest working guys I've ever seen. They're here because they have to earn a living, but they're doing it because they love it. When something's wrong with the car, they don't ask what's wrong with it. They find what's wrong with it and they fix it and we get back out. Everybody works together. There are no slackers. Everyone's on the same page and we're here to race, to take the checkered and be on the track no matter what it takes. Guys have sprinted from infields to outfields to get stuff to fix the car and over the wall and... I mean, whatever it takes and I don't even have to tell them to be that way. They are that way. That's why I've been with them for the past few years and that's why I'll stay with them and not go (in) any other directions because we all operate under the same mentality that we're here to race no matter what.”
Rounding out 2008 on a positive note—and ‘positive’ can be defined in many ways for Feinberg, would make the tough season his Primetime team’s had to date a bit easier to accept. “A podium would be great. I don't see a podium being so far out of reach for us with the next few tracks that we're going to be racing because we're kind of at the top of the speed bump right now and we're about to roll over to the other side. It's like everything is kind of coming together slowly but surely and hopefully with the last 3 races we can give it a strong push to round out 2008.”
Life at the back of the pack has never been easy, and it will only get tougher as the overall quality of the ALMS series grows. Whether Feinberg’s Primetime operation switches to a new car next or they stick with the Viper, there will always be an underdog at the bottom of the timesheets that’s punching well above their weight, and those punches often go unnoticed.
With the tenacity he’s displayed this far in 2008, expect Feinberg to keep punching until the rest of the racing world sits up and takes notice.
Click Here to watch Joel at work inside his GT2 Viper at Mid-Ohio.
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