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GRAND-AM
IN THE COCKPIT: Jeff Segal, Barber
Almost two months after the bitter disappointment we endured at Daytona, the team was anxious to return to the race track on order to get our championship charge underway...
Jeff Segal headed into the second round of the GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series with the unknowns of how the new Ferrari F458 Italia Grand-Am would react to the slick Barber circuit. (Photo: LAT)
Last weekend's second round of the 2012 GRAND-AM Rolex Series marked a return to the series' standard two-and-three-quarter hour sprint race format, as well as a return to a natural road course layout instead of the superspeedway style venue of the season opening Rolex 24 at Daytona. Almost two months removed from the bitter disappointment we endured at Daytona, the entire AIM Autosport Team FXDD organization was anxious to return to the race track on order to get our championship charge underway with a good result.
Round two of the season would take place at the picturesque Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Ala., however before we were ready to race again there was a lot of work to be completed by the team.
We spent the past eight weeks undergoing a thorough rebuild of our Ferrari 458 racecar, stripping much of the car down to the bare aluminum frame and rebuilding it with fresh new components to prepare for the sprint race season. This rebuild process allowed the team to get even more familiar with the intricate details of our all-new Ferrari GT car, and also provided a great opportunity to start a few R&D projects that we feel will help our performance in future races. With the relatively late arrival of our car and the time crunch that we faced before the Rolex 24, our guys definitely appreciated some quality time to poke around and get to know the car better.
While we had entered the Rolex 24 with a few questions regarding the durability of a new and essentially untested racecar, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the car ran faultlessly for the entire race. We were even more impressed with the condition of many of the major components when they faced closer inspection during the rebuild process. Finding that the suspension, gearbox, motor, and other key systems looked almost new after 24-hours of abuse gives us a lot of confidence that we have a very sturdy car for the rest of the
season, and speaks volumes about the quality of design and workmanship found in the car from Michelotto and Ferrari.
The even more impressive part is the amount of parts carryover from the 458 Italia road car, which proves that it truly is built as a racecar for the street!
Many of our competitors in the Rolex Series GT class opted spend their extended break by going testing, and while we are certainly eager to continue putting miles on our car and building our bank of data for the future, we decided that our time was better spent back in the shop making sure that every little detail was ready for the upcoming race at Barber. We still need more track time to reach our full potential, but there is no use going testing until you've got everything with the car exactly where you want it in the first place.
Going into the weekend at Barber, we had plenty of reasons to be optimistic. The event was scheduled to start with a bonus Wednesday promoter test day, which promised us critical extra mileage to work on our setup and tune our Ferrari to the track and the conditions. We had a bunch of new parts and pieces to try out on the car, and we were looking forward to seeing the benefits of the R&D that the guys had done at the shop.
Moreover, we believed that the racetrack at Barber would perfectly suit the 458's handling and braking abilities, and the straight-line speed deficit that we faced at Daytona was unlikely to be an issue with so few straights on the circuit.
Armed with a detailed plan accounting for every single minute of track time available on Wednesday, we were thrown a curve ball right from the get-go as delays on the track seriously compressed our available track time and left us very little opportunity to test as we had planned. The little bit of running we did was enough to let us know that we were in for a trying weekend, as the car's handling left a lot to be desired and we were struggling to match the pace of the GT front-runners.
Even ignoring the time sheet, the car was clearly not happy at all and the lack of handling balance made it very tricky to drive.
While we hadn't unloaded with the ideal setup on Wednesday, the team put in a late night to make major changes to the car. On Thursday we hit the track again only to find that we were still some way off the pace, and still struggling with a car that was downright evil to drive. When you can't brake, can't turn, and can't put down the power, you don't really have much going for you! It is worth noting that while we have a lot of data from the GT3 version of the car run in Europe for the past year, we found very quickly that the GRAND-AM
spec car clearly has different setup requirements to work well.
The two days of struggles reflect our learning process to find something that worked well, and specifically the need to tailor the car to the needs of the Continental tires.
Not ready to throw in the towel just yet, all of the engineers and mechanics put their heads down and spent another late night on Thursday making yet another sweeping round of wholesale changes aimed at finding some grip around the slippery Barber racetrack. Full credit to the team-- when we rolled onto the track for Friday morning practice, the car was BRILLIANT, and finishing morning practice in P1 put a smile on everyone's face. From that point on, we felt like we had the car we needed to race up front, and we were all pretty excited!
Further bolstering our team's confidence, my co-driver Emil Assentato had clearly showed up with his A-game and he took full advantage of the grip that we had found overnight by planting the car solidly on the front row of the grid in qualifying, and tantalizingly close to his first pole position in the GT class. Now things were looking very promising for the race...
Round two of the season would take place at the picturesque Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Ala., however before we were ready to race again there was a lot of work to be completed by the team.
We spent the past eight weeks undergoing a thorough rebuild of our Ferrari 458 racecar, stripping much of the car down to the bare aluminum frame and rebuilding it with fresh new components to prepare for the sprint race season. This rebuild process allowed the team to get even more familiar with the intricate details of our all-new Ferrari GT car, and also provided a great opportunity to start a few R&D projects that we feel will help our performance in future races. With the relatively late arrival of our car and the time crunch that we faced before the Rolex 24, our guys definitely appreciated some quality time to poke around and get to know the car better.
While we had entered the Rolex 24 with a few questions regarding the durability of a new and essentially untested racecar, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the car ran faultlessly for the entire race. We were even more impressed with the condition of many of the major components when they faced closer inspection during the rebuild process. Finding that the suspension, gearbox, motor, and other key systems looked almost new after 24-hours of abuse gives us a lot of confidence that we have a very sturdy car for the rest of the
season, and speaks volumes about the quality of design and workmanship found in the car from Michelotto and Ferrari.
The even more impressive part is the amount of parts carryover from the 458 Italia road car, which proves that it truly is built as a racecar for the street!
Many of our competitors in the Rolex Series GT class opted spend their extended break by going testing, and while we are certainly eager to continue putting miles on our car and building our bank of data for the future, we decided that our time was better spent back in the shop making sure that every little detail was ready for the upcoming race at Barber. We still need more track time to reach our full potential, but there is no use going testing until you've got everything with the car exactly where you want it in the first place.
Going into the weekend at Barber, we had plenty of reasons to be optimistic. The event was scheduled to start with a bonus Wednesday promoter test day, which promised us critical extra mileage to work on our setup and tune our Ferrari to the track and the conditions. We had a bunch of new parts and pieces to try out on the car, and we were looking forward to seeing the benefits of the R&D that the guys had done at the shop.
Moreover, we believed that the racetrack at Barber would perfectly suit the 458's handling and braking abilities, and the straight-line speed deficit that we faced at Daytona was unlikely to be an issue with so few straights on the circuit.
Armed with a detailed plan accounting for every single minute of track time available on Wednesday, we were thrown a curve ball right from the get-go as delays on the track seriously compressed our available track time and left us very little opportunity to test as we had planned. The little bit of running we did was enough to let us know that we were in for a trying weekend, as the car's handling left a lot to be desired and we were struggling to match the pace of the GT front-runners.
Even ignoring the time sheet, the car was clearly not happy at all and the lack of handling balance made it very tricky to drive.
While we hadn't unloaded with the ideal setup on Wednesday, the team put in a late night to make major changes to the car. On Thursday we hit the track again only to find that we were still some way off the pace, and still struggling with a car that was downright evil to drive. When you can't brake, can't turn, and can't put down the power, you don't really have much going for you! It is worth noting that while we have a lot of data from the GT3 version of the car run in Europe for the past year, we found very quickly that the GRAND-AM
spec car clearly has different setup requirements to work well.
The two days of struggles reflect our learning process to find something that worked well, and specifically the need to tailor the car to the needs of the Continental tires.
Not ready to throw in the towel just yet, all of the engineers and mechanics put their heads down and spent another late night on Thursday making yet another sweeping round of wholesale changes aimed at finding some grip around the slippery Barber racetrack. Full credit to the team-- when we rolled onto the track for Friday morning practice, the car was BRILLIANT, and finishing morning practice in P1 put a smile on everyone's face. From that point on, we felt like we had the car we needed to race up front, and we were all pretty excited!
Further bolstering our team's confidence, my co-driver Emil Assentato had clearly showed up with his A-game and he took full advantage of the grip that we had found overnight by planting the car solidly on the front row of the grid in qualifying, and tantalizingly close to his first pole position in the GT class. Now things were looking very promising for the race...
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