It is past time I got back to our Motorsports Blog. Sorry for the long delay. At our last event of 2011 in early October at Road America things were going great. My personal lap times were competitive with the top guys in the series. In the final race on Sunday afternoon I was driving very aggressively, but in control and confident in all the turns and braking zones. An opportunity presented itself to make a move into second place. I pulled up alongside of Brian Kimmins on the slight uphill coming out of Canada Corner. This took me off line and when I tucked back in behind Brian right at the crest of the hill and at the slight left turn I spun out and into the tires on the outside of the track. So much for 2011.
Onto 2012. Our first event this year was The 48 Hours of Sebring put on by the Porsche Club of America (PCA) February 3-6, 2012. This was my first event with the PCA. They did a great job organizing 400 racers and advanced drivers education attendees. We again are campaigning with the Intercontinental Trophy Cup Cayman series. Our ITC group raced within the PCA races as a subgroup so to speak. We had practice on Thursday and Friday. Then on Saturday and Sunday we raced – two shorter sprint races on Saturday and a longer Enduro on Sunday. The Saturday races had approximately 70 cars in each race. I have never raced in that type of congestion, especially at the start. It was crazy. I came around the blind Sebring turn 1 with cars aggressively going for it on every side. Guys trying to dart into every minute opening that might present itself at any given moment. As soon as I can see around the turn 1 wall and down the straight, I see cars spinning and bouncing off each other like bowling pins and tire smoke filling the air. They yellow flag the race for a few laps which lets us thin out. I skated through it all unscathed and on track. I finished both races mid pack.
Sunday came the longer hour and a half enduro. Michael Levitas of TPC racing introduced me to Randy Pobst. Randy is a multi-year World Challenge Champion, Daytona 24 hour winner and has over 70 professional wins in his racing history. Michael worked with PCA guys to let Randy team up with me in the enduro race. Randy started the race in my car. He spent about an hour in the car. He moved up through the pack pretty well and then handed the car over to me. I got re-passed by some of the guys Randy had gotten around. This race had the fastest cars of the whole event entered, including the new 2010-2012 GT3 Cup cars. I was apprehensive about being out with those guys. So it was great to have Randy to get things started for us. He also pointed out a number of areas where we could improve our car setup.
We had a great time and met some fantastic people while at Sebring. Here are links from Ustream to Randy’s and my stints during the enduro on Sunday. There is an advertisement you have to listen to at the beginning, but then you can watch the start and the driver switch in the second video. We have two videos because we had to switch cameras which were actually iphones. We sent the iphone video stream live to Ustream. Amazing technology. Thanks for your interest and be sure to call if we can help with any of your racing or race car needs.
Geoff Isringhausen