Return to Belle Isle.
September 1, 2007 Detroit, MI - The return to Belle Isle in Detroit over the Labor Day weekend was much anticipated by all teams and fans. There had been no event here for some 4 years and this left most teams on par in terms of track data and driver experience. This coupled with the beginning of the 'silly season' -- where all of the teams, drivers, sponsors and manufactures are hustling in the paddock to craft their plans for 2008 -- all made for an memorable weekend. Hats off to Roger Penske who brought the ALMS teams back to Bell Isle and helped put on what was probably the best organized and serviced event on our calendar to-date.
The weather was perfect but the track conditions were tricky. This street course was comprised of many surface changes (asphalt to concrete, different types of concrete, and several large concrete patch sections in high-speed areas). Add in difficult road crowning to contend with in some of the more challenging corners -- car set-up was critical.
The track took it's toll with six GT2 cars failing to finish including a dramatic loss of one of the Flying Lizard Motor sports Porsches which burned on the track after contact with one of the Tafel Racing Porsches. Other GT2 teams failing to finish here were the Panoz team and the Rahal Letterman Porsche.
The Team TransSport Porsche GT3 managed to finish in 6th position in GT2, a few seconds out of 5th. Post race analysis illustrated that an unscheduled pit stop to fix a driver radio after the last driver change cost the team 5th.
Both drivers commented on the balance of the car -- both stating that it was exceptional. Jim Bell burned plenty of midnight oil incrementally tweaking out the set up for this car on this unknown track and ultimately, with the last set of changes before the race, got it perfect. This was a first look at Detroit for Yokohama and it would be expected that their tire would be off the pace here. However, critical data was gathered the TransSport car was the only Yokohama car to finish.
Said Jim Bell, "This track really showed again the dominance of the Ferrari's. We really had to tweak and tweak the car to get the set up right. But this was probably the case for everyone as nobody really has useful data for Bell Isle. I think both drivers did well and we were prepared for and followed all of the pre-race strategy scenarios we could envision. We've added Derk Hartland on race strategy and we think that should help a good deal in the last two races. This was Derk's first race with us and I think everyone values his input and approach. We were the third Porsche and that's a good result for us. The two Porsches in front of us are spending more than twice what we are."
The team looks forward to a month off in preparation for the Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta. This 10-hour race is a qualifying race for Le Mans. Petit takes place on October 6th.