LAW: Only One Race Left

GRAND-AM

LAW: Only One Race Left

The last two race weekends were very busy. Before they even started, I spent a week in Guatemala coaching a client in a GT3 Cup Porsche.

Darren Law | http://www.darrenlaw.com | Posted October 06, 2009 Phoenix, AZ

After opening the season in style with a win at the Rolex 24, Darren Law and his Brumos Racing team hope to close out the season with another win. (LAT)

The last two race weekends were very busy. Before they even started, I spent a week in Guatemala coaching a client in a GT3 Cup Porsche. Guatemala City was nice and reminded a lot of Mexico City where Grand-Am used to go.

The track was about an hour outside of the city in a beautiful area surrounded by several volcanoes. It was a bit tight and bumpy and would have been tough to hold a professional race there with our type of cars, but it was still a lot of fun to drive. I was initially concerned with all of the armed guards in the city, but in the end I felt safe and had a great time.

Luckily I didn't drink the water, so I felt fine by the time I got to Miller Motorsports Park in Utah for the Grand-Am Rolex Series race.

The Utah race was a short weekend. The short weekends are great for not taking up too much time, but the important thing for this type of weekend is that you roll off the truck with the setup pretty close. If not, you don’t have any time to find which direction the car should go. The other issue is if you have a problem, which we did in the first and only long practice session. That left us a 30-minute session to sort things out and then qualify.

It was David Donohue’s turn to qualify this weekend. He did a great job with the limited time we had and qualified the car sixth. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to get in the car until the 30-minute warm-up and with a 4.5-mile track, that isn’t a lot of laps. I was finishing the race so that would have to be it for my track time.

We had a pretty good start to the race and David was running a solid fifth place. After our pit stop and driver change, things went wrong. There was a yellow flag during my stint and when we restarted, I got hit by another DP, which knocked out the rear toe and ripped the door apart. It was stuck half open and I ran the rest of the race like that. Needless to say, it didn't do much for the handling of the car and we finished back a few places.

There was really no time to debrief after the race because as soon as the race ended, I got on a 'red-eye' flight to Atlanta to test with Flying Lizard Motorsport for the Petit Le Mans race the next day. When I got to Road Atlanta it had been raining for days – the whole city was flooded as well as the race track.

It stopped enough that day to get some laps in both in dry and wet conditions, so we had a general idea of setup for either condition.

I am unsure how this race would have ended up as it was red-flagged only halfway through, so we missed out on about five hours of racing. But the red flag was necessary – cars were flying off track everywhere when the rain came down. It was flooding the track so much you almost couldn't even idle around without sliding off.

So now it is coming down to the final event of the 2009 Rolex Series season. We are finishing at Homestead-Miami Speedway along with the IndyCar Series. The Porsche engine is good on this type of track since we can keep the revs up for a majority of the lap and we always seem to run well here. I am looking forward to putting this season behind us.

It started out so great with the Rolex 24 At Daytona win, but had some tough times in the middle. I would love to close out our season as we started, with a win! We will also have our year-end banquet in Miami after the race and this is a nice close to the season where everyone can finally relax and have some fun together.

~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.

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

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Darren Law

DarrenLaw.com

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