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Grand Am
SHANK: Reflecting On Road America
Going back to Road America for the first time since our Atlantics days, we had the luxury of testing at two weeks prior to the race there...
Michael Shank  |  Posted June 30, 2011  
Michael Shank Racing headed to Road America to kick off the second half of the 2011 season. (Photo: John Dagys)
Going back to Road America for the first time since our Atlantics days, we had the luxury of testing at two weeks prior to the race there. The test went very well and we had a very productive two days. So going into the Road America race weekend, we were pretty confident on where we were. As we all arrived at the track for the test day, we would fight the whole time with the weather. We ended up sneaking in some dry running through the test day on Wednesday.

Our biggest surprise came to us right away on the test day, as the car was not nearly as good as when we had been there two weeks prior. There was a ton more rubber down from the June Sprints the previous weekend. We immediately went to work to get the balance back. The good news was that within two more outings, we had the car back to where we were happy with it again.

As I wrote in my last blog, I have pleaded with GRAND-AM to "Put us where the people are" as soon as possible....This weekend was a GREAT example of the theory. The place was packed, my guess is that there were 50,000 people there on Saturday and they all were super excited and engaged us a lot.

Another interesting thing that occurred this weekend is that our canopy played host to a public walkway right through it! As it turned out it was a great exercise in getting the people right in the action. It did not hurt our team at all and it let the public get a glimpse of how we live when we are racing. We had a lot of people just park there and watch the team prepare the car between sessions. This might be a great idea that we stumbled into for the future. The best way we can the passion for our type of racing from the general public is to put them right inside it...Also, it provides a captive audience for us to promote our partners!!

Going into qualifying we were very confident in our car. Oz was P1 in the practice right before the Qual. session and John had done a very quick lap in a mock qualifying run in the Trueman session.

In qualifying John posted his best time of the weekend by over a second and a half putting the Crown Royal car P5 for the race! It was John's personal best for qualifying this year. He out qualified some very good pros and I just couldn't be more happy for John than I am now. I may be glowing a little bit for him. By the way, John Pew became a grandfather for the first time this weekend, with the new baby being born on Friday during the weekend. This grandpa can drive--congrats John!!

For the race we talked a lot with John about the start and how to maintain his position with a lot of very aggressive pros around him. We knew what our strengths were and we made sure John knew it also... It went perfect, John maintained his start position perfectly and for the next 6 laps started to catch Burt Frisselle in P4 each lap.

But then, the big one happened...Most people have seen the GT crash now several times, we are just real happy that all escaped without real injury.

We decided to pit John and send him back out to keep his great momentum going. Unfortunately, on the in lap and right in front of the pits, Burt Frisselle made a last minute decision to cross the track and enter pit lane and drug a huge amount of dirt and turf in the process. The resulting dirt clod hit our nose and took the radiator screen out and filled the radiator intake on our car…

We kept John in the car, but with the time it took to get the dirt out of the nose we lost some track position that would hurt us the rest of the race.

As the race continued under yellow we knew we would have to bring John back in for strategies sake. We did the driver change under yellow and put Oz back out with what we thought was a good position to get a good finish.

At the green we knew we were in trouble when Oz reported the car had lost its good balance. In the warmup 1 hour before the green our car was very good and P1 or 2 with no problem, how could this be?

As we found out later, we suffered from horrible tire pick up. We peeled a huge amount of rubber off of tire after the race. Under the rubber we found the mold lines still on the tire...

Ozz did a good job of holding onto the car for the duration of the race and we still managed a P5 finish but way under what I thought we could do for this race. It was really frustrating for all involved.

Some good news has just been announced that we will run Matt Bell and James Davison in the No. 23 car for Laguna. We are super excited to have two cars again and really look forward to seeing what these young guys can do in our car.

On top of that we have some more exciting news coming about the No. 23 in the coming weeks!

There was one last black cloud event for us this week...Crown Royal announced that have pulled out of most of their motorsports sponsorships for 2012. We are really sad to hear this news as they have been great partners for us over the last 2 years, we will miss them very much and thank them for all their support!

Loading tomorrow for Laguna, can't wait!!

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Mike Shank is team owner of Michael Shank Racing, one of the premier Daytona Prototype teams in the GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series. Learn more about Shank and his team at http://www.michaelshankracing.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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