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GRAND-AM
IN THE COCKPIT: Ricky Taylor, Mid-Ohio
It was time to bounce back going into Mid-Ohio. Everyone was ready to have a great result and make up ground in the championship...
Ricky Taylor at the wheel of the No. 10 SunTrust Racing Corvette at Mid-Ohio. (Photo: Brian Cleary/GRAND-AM)
It was time to bounce back going into Mid-Ohio. Everyone was ready to have a great result and make up ground in the championship. The poor result in Detroit was my fault so I felt a lot of pressure to not make a mistake but, more importantly, I wanted to treat it as an opportunity to overcome the pressure and hopefully have a good performance. In the past six years, our team has not finished on the podium at Mid-Ohio despite always having a strong car.
The GRAND-AM rules change to get an extra set of tires for the weekend made the weekend much more productive. Teams were now participating in practice sessions instead of sitting out and saving tires for the race. Brian, our engineer, was able to have a real test plan where we could really tune the car. Practice went quite well, we made a lot of changes, but the major players became clear -- the 99 was very strong and they were looking like the car to beat.
Qualifying came, and it was my turn to qualify and Max’s turn to finish. I wanted to have good qualifying to hopefully start making up for the mistake in Detroit. I pushed very hard in qualifying but only to end up third behind the 99 and 90. Toward the end of the session, I made a mistake and went through the gravel but everything ended up OK.
Starting on the inside of the second row at Mid-Ohio could have been a little lucky because, if you get a decent jump, you can simply tuck in behind the leader and inherit second place. That is exactly the way it worked out and we came out of turn one in P2. We expected the 99 to just run away with the lead but the top three stayed glued together.
A couple of laps later, going through turn two, I made a mistake on the exit of the corner by sliding wide in some grass that someone had flicked onto the track. The mistake allowed Valiante in the 90 to get a run down the backstraight. I defended but was too conservative on the brakes and he went by into second place.
We continued to run together until the 99 had an ECU issue, which caused them to lose power steering which, in turn, made him go wide in turn 12 and allowed Valiante and me to go by. Shortly after we went into second spot, we lost all telemetry and data.
This sounds like not a huge problem, but the team really relies on all of the channels that are live streaming to the pit lane to diagnose if something is going wrong with the car, along with hundreds of other parameters. In the car, we lost our dash, rev lights, and the pit speed limiter. It was not a huge deal but it did take a little bit of time to get in the new rhythm of things.
Max then got in the car after the team made another pit stop and did a fantastic job to hold off the hard-charging Pruett and Barbosa. If he could have held them off for the entire race, we would be one point out of the championship lead. Pruett in the 01 was much more difficult to hold off because the Rileys were much quicker than us this weekend in the straights and therefore harder to defend, so Max was having an easier time holding off Barbosa than Pruett.
Max held them off for an incredible amount of time and eventually a bit of unlucky traffic allowed Pruett to go by, but at the same time Barbosa tried to capitalize on the situation. Going into turn five, Max and Barbosa made contact, which bent our wheel quite severely, causing the tire to go down and Max to spin and Barbosa could not avoid colliding with the front of our car on the way by.
Those situations are tough to watch from the pit lane because you are 100-percent helpless. But it was a racing incident and Max had held off a lot of strong cars for a very long time. We could not get going again and would have to settle for last-place points.
Next up will be the 24 hours of Le Mans. We will not be racing but we will all be going in support of my brother Jordan who is driving for Corvette. After Le Mans, we will go straight to Road America for our GRAND-AM race. Road America will likely suit the Riley cars, but we will be pushing hard to keep the Corvette streak alive and to try to get some points back in the championship.
Ricky Taylor, 22-year-old son of three-time sports car champion and team owner Wayne Taylor, embarks on his third full season co-driving with veteran Max Angelelli in the No. 10 SunTrust Corvette Dallara of Wayne Taylor Racing. Follow him on Twitter: @RickyTaylor10 or at http://www.suntrustracing.com
The GRAND-AM rules change to get an extra set of tires for the weekend made the weekend much more productive. Teams were now participating in practice sessions instead of sitting out and saving tires for the race. Brian, our engineer, was able to have a real test plan where we could really tune the car. Practice went quite well, we made a lot of changes, but the major players became clear -- the 99 was very strong and they were looking like the car to beat.
Qualifying came, and it was my turn to qualify and Max’s turn to finish. I wanted to have good qualifying to hopefully start making up for the mistake in Detroit. I pushed very hard in qualifying but only to end up third behind the 99 and 90. Toward the end of the session, I made a mistake and went through the gravel but everything ended up OK.
Starting on the inside of the second row at Mid-Ohio could have been a little lucky because, if you get a decent jump, you can simply tuck in behind the leader and inherit second place. That is exactly the way it worked out and we came out of turn one in P2. We expected the 99 to just run away with the lead but the top three stayed glued together.
A couple of laps later, going through turn two, I made a mistake on the exit of the corner by sliding wide in some grass that someone had flicked onto the track. The mistake allowed Valiante in the 90 to get a run down the backstraight. I defended but was too conservative on the brakes and he went by into second place.
We continued to run together until the 99 had an ECU issue, which caused them to lose power steering which, in turn, made him go wide in turn 12 and allowed Valiante and me to go by. Shortly after we went into second spot, we lost all telemetry and data.
This sounds like not a huge problem, but the team really relies on all of the channels that are live streaming to the pit lane to diagnose if something is going wrong with the car, along with hundreds of other parameters. In the car, we lost our dash, rev lights, and the pit speed limiter. It was not a huge deal but it did take a little bit of time to get in the new rhythm of things.
Max then got in the car after the team made another pit stop and did a fantastic job to hold off the hard-charging Pruett and Barbosa. If he could have held them off for the entire race, we would be one point out of the championship lead. Pruett in the 01 was much more difficult to hold off because the Rileys were much quicker than us this weekend in the straights and therefore harder to defend, so Max was having an easier time holding off Barbosa than Pruett.
Max held them off for an incredible amount of time and eventually a bit of unlucky traffic allowed Pruett to go by, but at the same time Barbosa tried to capitalize on the situation. Going into turn five, Max and Barbosa made contact, which bent our wheel quite severely, causing the tire to go down and Max to spin and Barbosa could not avoid colliding with the front of our car on the way by.
Those situations are tough to watch from the pit lane because you are 100-percent helpless. But it was a racing incident and Max had held off a lot of strong cars for a very long time. We could not get going again and would have to settle for last-place points.
Next up will be the 24 hours of Le Mans. We will not be racing but we will all be going in support of my brother Jordan who is driving for Corvette. After Le Mans, we will go straight to Road America for our GRAND-AM race. Road America will likely suit the Riley cars, but we will be pushing hard to keep the Corvette streak alive and to try to get some points back in the championship.
Ricky Taylor, 22-year-old son of three-time sports car champion and team owner Wayne Taylor, embarks on his third full season co-driving with veteran Max Angelelli in the No. 10 SunTrust Corvette Dallara of Wayne Taylor Racing. Follow him on Twitter: @RickyTaylor10 or at http://www.suntrustracing.com
Road Atlanta
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