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LAW: A Roller-Coaster-Ride Of A Weekend
Written by: Darren Law
DarrenLaw.com   http://www.darrenlaw.com
05/05/2009
Millville, NJ
 
We've just come off our third event last weekend at New Jersey Motorsports Park, and for our Brumos team, it was a roller-coaster-ride of a weekend. We had so many ups and downs! Heading into this race we had several important goals: start with a better setup than last year, finish well and maintain the points lead, resolve on-track incidents from last weekend and stay focused with all of the media events we have to do.
Darren Law (R) and teammate David Donohue (L) survived the downpour at New Jersey to claim a valuable 4th place finish, further adding to their points lead. Did a visit to a Palm Reader help? (LAT) » More Photos

To begin, David Donohue and Scott Pruett discussed their incident at the last race. I don’t know that we are all happy, but things are a bit calmer and we agreed that what happened wasn’t intentional.

As for starting out this weekend better than we did last year – well, that just didn’t happen.

Last year, for whatever reason, we just never got the setup right and we were off the pace all the way until race time. This year, we had the same issue. It was very frustrating. We started out off the pace and were never able to get the car handling the way we would have liked.

We had numerous meetings to discuss why. It wasn’t like it was just one driver or one car having trouble, all of us were off and neither the 58 or the 59 car could even get close. Both the engineering staff and we as drivers are still unsure why this track gives us so much trouble. This makes for a rough weekend; after running at the front last season and starting off so well this season, it brings the whole team down.

It was the worst qualifying position that we have had in several years. Luckily for us, the forecast for the race was rain all day, so we threw out the dry setup that we could never get right and put a rain setup on and hoped for the best.

Weekends like this happen and if you let it get to you, it can make you crazy.

It was a busy weekend between meeting within the team trying to figure out our handling issues, Q&A sessions at the local Porsche Club corral, the autograph session, dinner functions at the track and more meetings to try and resolve our handling issues. It made for long days.

David and I usually share a rental car and we discuss what happened that day on the way to the hotel. This weekend, the night before the race, David and I were heading out of the track and complaining to each other on the way to dinner about how bad things were going. As we were driving through some little town, he saw a sign that said Psychic / Tarot card reader. He thought it would be funny to have the lady tell us what the tarot cards said, so we stopped in.

Neither of us are into this stuff, but we both put down our $25 and waited to hear what she had to say. She told me really basic stuff like, “Your family loves you." I was sitting there thinking, "NO KIDDING!” Finally, at the end she asked if there was anything else I wanted to know and I told her I wanted to know how my day was going to go tomorrow. She said, “It’s not in the cards!!!” David had the same result. It was funny, but it didn’t give us any help.

As far as our race was concerned, it was one of the
worst weather conditions we have had for an entire race in a long time. There was so much rain and standing water, you couldn’t see but a few feet in front of you from the spray. At the drop of the green flag, I couldn’t see anything. Luckily, our spotters told me to run to the inside because before we even got to the brake zone for turn one, I could see the back end of another car completely sideways next to me on the front straight, which brought out the first yellow.
The weekend started off slow for the Brumos Porsche team, but perseverance was vital in making it to the finish. (LAT) » More Photos

My entire first stint was basically spent trying to drive hard and not crash every lap. In the rain, it's easy to do one, but not both! We had a great first stint and I had come from 11th to second by the time we stopped. David also had a really great run – he made no mistakes and drove it to the front. We still didn’t have the fastest car but he ran solidly in third until a couple of laps from the end.

Unfortunately, he caught some slower traffic and this allowed the Penske car to get by. We were close to another podium, but we were very happy to come away from this race with a fourth and maintain our points lead, after such a terrible start to the weekend.

The next Grand-Am race for me is at Laguna Seca in about a week and a half. Unfortunately, it is also the same weekend that the American Le Mans Series is racing in Utah. I also drive for the Flying Lizard GT2 Porsche team in that series, but because of the conflict and the points lead we have in Grand-Am, I will have to miss the Utah event.

It will be nice to have a small break, though – after Laguna, I will have done five races in the past seven weeks. Now I can finally get caught up at home on the list my wife has been making ...

~Darren

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

Rolex 24 At Daytona winner Darren Law has been racing in multiple sports-car series since 1997. He continues to be the man for all series, entering more than 20 races in three countries this year, driving Daytona Prototype and GT Porsche race cars. On several weekends, he'll commute between tracks, alternating stints in the No. 58 Brumos Racing Porsche-powered Riley in the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series and in the No. 44 Flying Lizard Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 RSR in the American Le Mans Series.

Darren has started more Rolex Series races than any other driver (112 through 2008). His credits include the 2001 GT championship, runner-up in the Sports Racer Prototype II class in 2002 and this year's Rolex 24 win. He is always a top contender in the prestigious Porsche Cup, with a close second in 2007.

Learn more about Darren at DarrenLaw.com, his safety and performance equipment sponsor CDOC at CDOC.com, and his safety enhancement gear partners at ShockDoctor.com.
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