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American LeMans
FRANCHITTI: See You At The Front
Looking back on the year as a whole, I’m really happy and proud of the job we all did and what we were able to achieve as team.
Marino Franchitti  | http://www.marinofranchitti.com  |  Posted October 30, 2009   London (ENG)

Unfortunately it was a really disappointing end to the ’09 season for the #20 BP Dyson Mazda car at Laguna Seca with a mechanical issue taking us out very early in the running.
Marino rounded out the season driving a BP Mazda dressed in the blue and red of sponsor Arco. (LAT)

I headed out to California a couple of days early to acclimatize as I always do when we race on the West coast. I just love not only the track at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, but also the surrounding area, it’s so beautiful and there is such a lot to see and do.

The highlight of the whole race weekend came before we even got on track when I had the opportunity to meet Jim Hall and get a close look at his famous Chaparral 2 and 2E. I love the 2E so much, it was an honour to see it in person and watching Jim Hall drive it at Laguna was something that will stay with me forever, I still find it hard to believe I actually got to see it!!

Our friends at Mazda and Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca allowed us to take our crew guys out for some laps of the circuit in the safety vehicles used at the track. There was an RX-8, a Mazda 6 and the Mazda CX-7 and would you believe that the CX-7 (which is an SUV) was our favourite?! It was so much fun hustling that big beast around the track (though all three cars were fun!) and it was nice to be able to give the guys some fun and in some way thank them for the amazing job they have done this year.

I loved the De Ferran Motorsports retro paint job, it was very classy, but we also had our own special paint scheme for the final race of the season. Whilst the #16 car was in our normal BP colours, in the #20 car we were running the colours of ARCO, a part of BP and a huge gas retailer on the West coast of the USA. I was thrilled with the way the car looked; it was just a shame we couldn’t get them a win, but it was fun carrying their colours.

The Laguna track is a breed apart when it comes to set-up and I was delighted (yet again!) with how little we had to change the car from its starting point, but over the weekend we really learned a huge amount about what makes it tick between the two cars. We had a couple of issues which curtailed our running in practice, but despite the time lost I thought Butch did a great job qualifying with a car that we had not been able to refine as much as we would have liked. By warm-up we had a really efficient program on both cars; our changes were not huge, but they really turned the car from pretty good to fantastic, and it gave us a huge amount of confidence going into the race. I have no doubt that Butch would have been able to take the pole with the car we had at the end of warm-up.
The smile never left Marino's face after getting to see the Chaparrals up close. (Marshall Pruett)

Butch made a great start taking the class lead from the word go and even pulled out a gap over the Fernandez car. Unfortunately it was not to last, around lap 30 a failure put us out which was hugely disappointing. Chris had started the #16 car from the back of the grid as they were running unclassified due to using the cutting edge fuel, BP Biobutanol, which they had also run at Petit Le Mans, the charge he put on from the back was quite something to behold. Despite going out early, Butch and I stayed in the pits watching the great run the #16 car had which included Guy challenging for the overall lead at one point. It was a real shame to see them taken out of contention after being hit by a GT car, but they showed once again that BP Biobutanol has a very exciting future in racing.

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Marino Franchitti

Dyson Racing

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