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American LeMans
FRANCHITTI: Mosport Madness
Well, my love affair with Mosport continues! We were 10 minutes away from completing a perfect weekend for the No 20 BP Dyson Mazda when...
Marino Franchitti  | http://www.marinofranchitti.com  |  Posted September 14, 2009   London (ENG)
Marino and Butch were just minutes away from their second win of the year when disaster struck. (LAT)
Welcome back!

Well, my love affair with Mosport continues! We were 10 minutes away from completing a perfect weekend for the No. 20 BP Dyson Mazda when we had the failure and I can’t tell you the disappointment the whole team felt.

To give you an idea of how good the car was, although we ran through a program of changes over the weekend, we raced a car that had ONE small adjustment from the time we arrived at the track. I’ve never experienced that and it again shows the fantastic job our engineers are doing; the car was just a blast to drive.

Both Dyson cars were running really well, as Guy and I showed by clocking identical times on Friday! Saturday morning was wet and with the forecast looking good for the rest of the day, we decided not to run the 20 car and use the information the 16 car learned, again another benefit of a two car team. It was the first time we had run properly in the wet with the coupe and we were delighted with it, Chris was flying and loved the car in those conditions. Until you run in the wet there is always a question in the back of your mind as to how it is going to be, and it was great for us to tick off another item on the “developing new car” job list.

It seemed the rain had been really heavy over night and we all felt for the huge amount of fans who were camping out. They are so passionate and committed, we just want to let them know how much we appreciate them being there and supporting us, especially the fans with the Saltires (that’s the Scottish flag to you non Scots) and the “Dyson 1-2” sign!

Qualifying in Mosport is so thrilling, especially turn 2 which I can say is my favorite corner on the planet, and the whole Dyson crew were hoping this would be our first 1-2 on the grid this season. We were not disappointed and I can’t tell you how thrilling it was to get my second pole of the season at the track I love the most, and having Chris take second was the icing on the cake. Anyone who saw the Speed coverage would have seen me hit the kerb hard in turn 3 on my fast lap, which luckily didn’t cost me any time and apart from that it was a strong lap.

It was pretty cold all weekend, but especially so on Sunday. I had a huge jacket and woolly hat on most of the day, which is not what you expect at the end of August! The cold weather made the start of the race very interesting as the two Acura P1’s struggled to get temperature into their huge front tyres. They were actually holding us up for the first lap or so in the corners, they seemed to be saving fuel and consequently didn’t pull a very big gap on us. A big part of that was the fact that our cars were just fantastic in traffic and we closed up to them every time we caught the GT field.

It was during traffic that I managed to get a run on Scott Sharp and take the overall lead of the race! It’s been a while since an LMP2 car took the lead of an ALMS race on track and I can tell you it was a lot of fun to be back at the front again, I can’t wait until next year when all the LMP’s will be in one class as the racing is going to be fantastic. Unfortunately our joy was short lived, I first caught the Field Lola and then the Autocon car, whose drivers seemed to forget what their mirrors were for (both were many laps down by this point). They caused me to lose almost 10 seconds in 2 laps, and just to add insult to injury they both sprayed what can only be described as an oil slick on my windscreen which meant I lost about 80% of my forward vision, I could only see out of each edge of the screen, I had almost zero forward vision.

This was bad enough, but then came a light sprinkle of rain that congealed with the oil taking the remaining vision I had so I was then driving blind. We were 4 laps from our pit stop window so my engineer asked me to keep going, which was hard, but we managed it and only lost one place to Chris plus about 8 seconds which was not too bad considering I was looking out the door windows! It’s the first time I’ve had an issue with vision in the coupe and it’s the first time I’ve missed simply being able to pull a tear off from my visor, but we are still developing our screens and making progress to help situations like this in the future.

Our guys have been working hard on their pit stops and it was great to see that paying off with a first class full service (that means driver change, fuel and tires), in fact both stops were spot on and I have to say thank you to them for all their efforts.

Unfortunately, it was soon after this that Chris had his off at turn one and as it’s flat in 5th/6th gear, it was a big one, it shows how sensitive the cars are now to any aero damage as his front left dive plane had been knocked off by a GT car the lap before which had really upset the aero balance. I was delighted to see that he was OK which I think shows not only how strong the car is, but how strong Chris is.

The Fernandez car had jumped us under the yellow, but Butch did a great job hunting down Adrian and re-took the lead. Once both cars had made their last stops, the Fernandez car was again just ahead, but Butch was catching him, though Adrian had a penalty to serve for speeding in the pits so we were looking good!

Butch was saving some fuel (we were good to the end) and was happy to let Adrian close up to him. Those of you who remember Butch keeping J.J. Lehto at bay a few years ago at Mosport would have been as comfortable as I was about him holding on to the lead for the last few laps. There had been a couple of abnormal numbers on the telemetry and unfortunately that signalled a failure which put us out of the race. I can’t tell you how devastated we all were, but we have to be happy with the overall performance of the weekend as I also got fasted lap in the race. We had completed enough laps to finish the race in second place which also guaranteed us second in the Drivers’ Championship.
Despite the letdown, the two teammates left Mosport with their sights set on a win at Petit Le Mans. (LAT)

The Fernandez crew clinched the Championship with the win and I have to congratulate them on that and for being such great competitors this year.

We now look forward to the second biggest race of the year and I can’t wait to get there as the field is just fantastic with Audi and Peugeot coming back; my team from Le Mans, Drayson Racing, bringing their new Lola P1 car and Oreca also coming to play. My brother, Dario, will back in the Acura which is really cool for me as we’ll have a chance to hang out and hopefully we get to mix it up on track a bit! On the Scottish side Allan McNish is back so there will be at least 2 other people in Road Atlanta that will understand what I’m saying!

Pre-Petit Le Mans I have the Goodwood Revival to look forward to and running the Ferrari 250 GTO again, but this time with Mark Hales so I’m looking forward to a very enjoyable weekend. I’ll fill you in on it next time!

~Marino

The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEEDtv.com, SPEED, FOX, or NewsCorp.

Marino Franchitti drives the #20 BP Dyson Racing Mazda LMP2 car alongside teammate Butch Leitzinger. Now in his second season with the Dyson team, the native of Scotland has distinguished himself as one of the fastest and most engaging drivers in the American Le Mans Series.

In his first sportscar racing season, driving for Porsche Cars Great Britain, Marino won the British GTO Championship in emphatic style, 11 podiums from 13 races which included 8 wins and 2 fastest laps. He mirrored his GT accomplishments when driving his first LMP2 prototype; breaking the lap record, he went on to take pole position and win the race. Now a skilled and experienced road racer in both GT and prototype categories, he is currently the only driver in the ALMS to have driven all three competing manufacturers in the LMP2 category, Acura, Porsche and Mazda.

Highly ranked amongst his career achievements so far is his overall win last year in a 4-hour race on the infamous 20km Nürburgring Nordschleife circuit in Germany. A true sportscar enthusiast, there are no barriers to Marino's love of competition; in particular his passion for historic racing. Competing at Goodwood is a priority and last year he drove arguably one of the historic greats, the Ferrari 250 GTO.

Learn more about Marino at www.MarinoFranchitti.com. His BP Dyson Racing Mazda team's site can be found at www.DysonRacing.com.
The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED
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Marino Franchitti

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