SHANK: Things Are Looking Up

GRAND-AM

SHANK: Things Are Looking Up

Lime Rock Park, Watkins Glen...and Road America testing to boot as Michael Shank Racing takes two week road trip...

Michael Shank | Posted June 16, 2011

Things are looking up for Michael Shank Racing, despite fielding only a single-car entry in the last three GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series raced. (Photo: MSR)

I will call this my triple blog as I neglected to get a story out about our race at VIR as well. My PR manager Matt Cleary will have to forgive me as writing a blog for me is a tough labor of love.

The VIR race for us ended in a P6 finish and I start with that as it was a pretty tough weekend for us. Our constant measure of where we are at with our car is how we roll off the trailer for the first practice session and we were not where we had hoped . The car was about 50% there off the trailer and we like to see at least an 80% success rate in this department.

Despite this, the guys kept their heads down and were able to get the car pretty good by the time we got to qualifying. Pew managed to turn his best lap for the weekend and qualified the car P7. He liked the balance of the car and we had good hope for the race.

When race time came around the rain started and came hard and fast. Pew started the race in a complete white out of rain, but managed the first two laps very well and kept the car on the track until the first full course caution came out. We were P5 at this point when GRAND-AM decided to run under yellow for a 1/2 hour and let the track dry and drain off some. During this time, the half-way point of the race came and we decided to do our first stop and put Ozz in.

During the middle part of the race we had very good pace and I thought we could end up with a podium if things went our way. On our last stop, which we made under yellow, the crew got Ozz out of the pits in P1. However, the windshield wiper had been turned backwards by a tearoff. Not too bad right? Well the problem was that when Ozz tried to fix the problem we gave him, we slid off track and packed the radiator with grass.

Mike Shank with Ozz Negri. (Photo: MSR)

We had to pit from a great track position and get the car cooled off. As much as we try to have perfection in our stops, stuff happens sometimes. It was nobody's real fault here, but the result was lost track position that we could not overcome.

So we finished the race P6 in the lead group, which was not what we wanted but we had some ideas of how to make things better too.

Heading to Lime Rock we knew we had a good package there last year. The No. 6 car finished P3 and Ozz was also very quick.

With the pace of the day very quick as we had to practice, qualify and race all within an eight hour period we had to be good right away as there was no time to deal with any handling issues.

Right off the trailer the car was VERY good. Ozz and John split the seat time - what little there was - and made only one small shock change before the race. As I said above, the most important thing we look at is how good we are off the trailer and this time we hit it within 90%. This will be a common theme as we hit the road for two races and two test days within 12 days!!

At the drop of the green flag we could see already that Pew had a very strong pace. John completed over one hour in the car before turning it over to Ozz in P5 on the lead lap on this 50 second per lap track!

I have to tell you I am so pleased with John's progress over these last two races. He puts in so much to compete at this high level. In my opinion he is the best Semi-Pro in the country. This first stint, to me, was John's best driving he has done in five years here at MSR. Great in traffic, great pace when by himself, just a great job all around!

The pace of the race was very fast, and with no yellows the leader was able to pull out almost a lap on us. When Ozz got in he drove as hard as he could and was turning very fast times. Eventually he caught both P2 and P3 and passed them, settling into P2. There were still NO YELLOWS so we could not get our track position back to the leader. By the end of the race only the No. 10 car and our No. 60 were on the lead lap and with no yellows, even with our pace we would never be able to catch the leader.

We finished P2 and it was a good day for us. We needed a podium and got it. But more importantly our strategy and pace were very good, our stops were very good and if felt like we may have hit on something good for the future.

Next we were off to Watkins Glen and the prep and turnaround after Lime Rock was pretty simple as we had virtually no damage from the race. We knew we had some challenges on set up for the Glen as we were not very good there last year. Ozz and his engineers, Dale Wise and Jeff Schaffner worked hard in the down time to make sure we started as good as we could, but I have to say, I was worried.

As it turned out I had nothing to worry about. The car was very good right off the trailer again! Ozz was in the top-three for the entire session and Pew agreed also that it was the best car he's had at The Glen.

We decided for strategy sake that we would qualify Pew here for the 6 hour race. He responded with a P7 qualifying position for us. His fastest lap of the weekend was in this session and he continued to impress all of us with his pace. We worked on the car more to try and get the best tire wear we could and all felt confident heading into the race.

Unfortunately it was raining hard for the start. Pew would have to endure this for his stint. In the past, hard rain was always John's weakest area of driving. In this case though, by the end of the stint Pew was only running fractionally slower than the leaders and made huge gains in these conditions. We compromised on the set up a little too much for the rain, so that made it a little harder but still a great job for John before he handed the car over to Ozz.

When Ozz got in we made a massive aero change to get the car back balanced again and it worked pretty well. We were hanging in P3-P5 for the middle part of the race and had no real issues UNTIL for the last two hours the throttle started hanging as it had done two other times this year. It made it impossible for Ozz to keep the ultimate pace we needed to finish on the podium. Ozz is a trooper and made it work the best he could and we held P5 right up to the last 1/2 hour.

With a 1/2 hour to go, Jeff Schaffner called for a very cool calculated risk in strategy. We knew we did not have the pace with the throttle issue so we tried a hail Mary to see if we could get on the podium. We pitted at a time when no one else did and it was timed so that when they did stop…we’d already be ahead.

It worked very well and we damn near had P3 when we exited the pits after our last stop.

In any case we finished P4 and we feel lucky to have that result. It’s these kind of gut calls that we will win us a race very soon.

One thing we took away from both these races is that the Ford motor is down on power from the other makes, this isn't a guess, this is fact. GRAND-AM is currently looking at this and I think we will get some relief in the very near future. Everyone, including Roush/Yates Racing works so hard at this, but the truth is the horsepower is growing and growing and we have a horsepower race going on now. My hope is that GRAND-AM gets a hold of this soon.

There was no rest for the guys, though, because after the race we again re-prepped the car to go to a two day test in Road America. GRAND-AM now allows Pro/Am teams to test at tracks we will race at, which is big for us so we decided to take advantage of it.

The Road America facility is really nice and the people were very accommodating to us. We rolled right off the trailer very good again and set out to get as much track time as we could. The weather cooperated with us and the test was great for us.

Overall we had a great two week road trip. We feel like our cars are getting better and better. Our success rate of being good right off the trailer is 3 for 3 now. Our pit work, strategy and drivers are really working well together. We are P5 in the championship now and our goal is to be P3 for the year and I think we can do it.

A couple closing thoughts:

1. Some of you may have heard that we will be racing at Indy next year. I can tell you I think we have a good shot at it but it's not done yet. However, not only might we get to race at Indy but there are several other VERY cool event tracks we may go to for 2012 that will finally give us a schedule that places us where the people are! Let's all hope these races and this schedule come to pass!! My message is always the same to GRAND-AM: Put Us Where The People Are!!

2. Lastly, Michael Shank Racing is now on Twitter. I drug my feet long enough on this stuff and now I try to tweet at every weekend or event that we go to. Please follow us at: @MichaelShankRac.

See you on Twitter or at Road America!!

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

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Shank

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