By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

This really sucks: in the final test session before the start of the Petit Le Mans, the new B-K Motorsports Lola coupe got loose, hit the wall backwards, and was demolished beyond repair. Following the wreck, the B-K team got its car under wraps and its tent buttoned up pretty quick, but B-K crew chief Larry Ellert and Mazda’s John Doonan were kind enough to come out and talk to me a bit about the car. Nearly the entire rear corner of the car was gone, with the wing, bellypan, and lots of carbon-fiber bodywork involved. The rear suspension was pretty severely jacked, with the right rear wheel ripped almost clear and the transaxle damaged beyond repair. Driver Gerardo Bonilla was at the wheel at the time, and as you can imagine, he’s pretty devastated. The B-K team will not be able to get the car back out on the track today, as there’s simply too much damage that won’t be able to be repaired on site.

But the B-K team isn’t the only one facing heartbreak—during the recon laps directly preceding starting grid, the No. 1 Audi driven by Allan McNish, who was fastest in the morning practice, also spun and got in the wall. The likely culprit was a cold set of tires on a cold track, and McNish limped the car back to the garage area with a lot of flapping bodywork (and some panels left on the track). Though it was initially reported that the Audi would be out for the start of the race as planned, it’s now not entirely clear whether it’ll join the pack on the starting grid. I guess we’ll know in a minute!

Check out the Amoco Ultimate Your Car Is Worth It Photo Contest. They’re giving away gas money on a weekly basis, and one Grand Prize Winner will get to go to France for 24 Hours Of Le Mans!

Continue reading "Mazda Team's Day Ends In Practice With Devastating Wreck" »

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

Today I met with driver Liz Halliday and marketing guy Andy Woolgar of Creation Autosportif, which is fielding two LMP1 prototypes in the Petit Le Mans, the No. 88 and the No. 888. Like Peugeot, Creation has only run two ALMS races this year, in preparation for a full season in 2009. The team focuses on setting the cars up for durability, as they run a number of burly endurance races throughout the world each season, the longest being the 24-Hour Le Mans in France. Their approach isn’t so much about showing off and running up front, Andy tells me, it’s about staying the course and bringing a steady charge from the rear—last year at Petit, it scored them a podium finish in third place. Liz says her No. 888 car tends to do well at Road Atlanta, and right now they’re just trying different suspension setups in an effort to compensate for the handling characteristics of the new style of Dunlops they’ve recently adopted. She says the car "porpoises" a little with the new tires, but they’re hoping to adjust that away before the green flag drops tomorrow. Oh, and another crazy thing about Creation? You can see the likenesses of their cars in the new Grid game. See more…

Check out the Amoco Ultimate Your Car Is Worth It Photo Contest. They’re giving away gas money on a weekly basis, and one Grand Prize Winner will get to go to France for 24 Hours Of Le Mans!

Continue reading "Crazy 8's: The Creation Autosportif Team" »

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

There was a big hubbub at the track today about Helio Castroneves, tabloid-bait and former winner of both the Indy 500 and Dancing With The Stars, having run afoul of the IRS. He was arraigned today in federal court in Miami, where he tearfully pleaded not guilty to charges of concealing millions of dollars in income from the tax man. I didn’t chase down all the gossipy details, but apparently the media is banned from taking his photo at the track this weekend, crushing the lifelong ambitions of the aspiring paparazzi among us. According to the Examiner, Helio will still run in the Petit Le Mans tomorrow with Ryan Briscoe in the No. 5 Penske Porsche.

Check out the Amoco Ultimate Your Car Is Worth It Photo Contest. They’re giving away gas money on a weekly basis, and one Grand Prize Winner will get to go to France for 24 Hours Of Le Mans!

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

Peugeot has been throwing a serious monkey wrench into Audi’s perfect program, coming out ahead of both R10′s yesterday in practice, and even thrashing the fabled Germans in qualifying today by winning the overall pole position with a lap of 1 min, 6.242 seconds—the fastest lap time recorded at Road Atlanta, ever. And the kicker? Peugeot’s not even competing for real—they’re simply testing their car and their team for what’s sure to be a blistering full season of ALMS racing in 2009!

Yesterday I talked to Bruno Famin, the technical director for the Peugeot team. He told me about the car’s all-aluminum 5.5L turbo-diesel V12, and explained how they’re working on going hybrid, adding a secondary electric motor to improve accelleration and efficiency on the 700-hp mill. I got a bit of a look at the Peugeot 908 today and yesterday in the garage—it’s clearly packing some state-of-the-art-technology, and the team is pretty secretive about it, even draping a sheet over the car’s internals any time they have it apart. Peugeot may run the new hybrid during the 2009 season, depending on whether possible changes in ALMS weight regulations allow for the heavy li-ion battery. The hybrid racecar would serve as a testing platform for the development of diesel-electric hybrids for the consumer market, like the Peugeot RC Concept making its debut at the Paris Motor Show. But since Peugeot doesn’t sell cars in the US, their full-season entry into American Le Mans Series has been a long time coming. And even once they do jump in with both feet, their participation in the series will be primarily geared toward preparation for the big one—the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France. Nonetheless, it’s going to be really interesting to see them rough up Audi’s reigning champions. Click below the jump to see more of the 908 and its team.

Check out the Amoco Ultimate Your Car Is Worth It Photo Contest. They’re giving away gas money on a weekly basis, and one Grand Prize Winner will get to go to France for 24 Hours Of Le Mans!

Continue reading "Diesel Dogfight: Peugeot 908 Is Up In Audi's Grille" »

By Jen

AKA SuzyBruisy

Today I caught up with B-K Motorsports driver Ben Devlin to find out how the team’s new Lola coupe is working out from the driver’s point of view. At some points during the discussion we had to shout, because Atlantic Championship cars were in practice out on the track—so I hope the whole conversation is audible (I can’t really tell in the noisy press room). I was kind of suprised to learn that you don’t have to do anything all that different to drive the new car, as compared to the old open-cockpit Lola. But it makes a lot of sense when you think about it: the car is engineered to drive more consistently through changes in ride height, and aerodynamically, there are fewer variables. Even the absence of a driver’s head moving around out in the air, a factor with the open-cockpit car, simplifies vehicle dynamics on the coupe. Qualifying is live on SPEED as we speak—let’s see how our BP Mazda does!

Check out the Amoco Ultimate Your Car Is Worth It Photo Contest. They’re giving away gas money on a weekly basis, and one Grand Prize Winner will get to go to France for 24 Hours Of Le Mans!

By Jen

AKA SuzyBruisy

Speaking of night driving, the No. 21 Panoz took an unfortunate turn and ended up stuck in the gravel runout between Road Atlanta’s turns 6 and 7 during practice last night. The driver said it was his first time driving the track after dark, and he just got into the corner a little too hard. There was minimal damage to the Panoz, but gravel got scattered all over the track after they pulled it out, so the track was red-flagged for a stretch while the cleaning crew swept up the mess. See more…

Check out the Amoco Ultimate Your Car Is Worth It Photo Contest. They’re giving away gas money on a weekly basis, and one Grand Prize Winner will get to go to France for 24 Hours Of Le Mans!

Continue reading "Panoz Gets Snoutful Of Gravel During Night Practice" »

By Jen

AKA SuzyBruisy

Another cool thing about the American Le Mans Series? Night practice. It’s common knowledge that racing in the dark, even under the lights, can do crazy things to drivers’ depth perception—and the dusk-til-dark practice session tonight had a similar effect on my camera’s settings. And though I realize that it’s stupid to try to photograph cars going 130 mph at night unless you have a tripod, a burly flash, and mad skills, I think these amateur pics managed to come out pretty disco-looking with the crazy lighting systems these cars run. More trippy night pics after the jump.

Check out the Amoco Ultimate Your Car Is Worth It Photo Contest. They’re giving away gas money on a weekly basis, and one Grand Prize Winner will get to go to France for 24 Hours Of Le Mans!

Continue reading "Night Moves" »

By Jen

AKA SuzyBruisy

I guess it’s more of a barn than a garage—Volkswagen TDI Cup competitors have to work on their rides door-to-door in a big white pole-tent lit by nothing but oversized Ikea-style Japanese lanterns. In keeping with its low-rent image, the TDI cup promises some of the most exciting racing out of the many different series that are running at Road Atlanta this week. With lots of bumpin’ and bangin’, it’s not all that far from my other favorite motorsports series, but with all the stuff that NASCAR opponents are always whining for: namely, road-course tracks (Sprint Cup series has two), and "stock" cars that truly are basically stock—nearly all the mods these 2.0L turbo-diesel Jettas are running, I’m told, can be ordered by the average joe from the dealership. This Saturday’s TDI Cup race, to be run immediately before the Petit Le Mans, will be particularly cut-throat. Why? Because it’s the final race of the season, the one that will decide the champion and award the $100,000 purse.

You’ll probably remember CarDomain member and TDI Cup competitor Chris Castagna (crc930), who showed up in the blog last week as the series points leader following the race in Iowa. He showed me around the garage area today and we talked a bit about the series. It turns out our boy has been knocked down to fourth in the points, following a couple of nasty wrecks over the last two races, one of which he says was purposefully caused by a rival. He can still win the championship on Saturday—all he has to do is win the final race. He says that no matter what the outcome, it’s going to be a fireworks show, with a lot at stake and many drivers willing to do anything to win. Plus, Atlanta is a fast track with long straights where drafting is possible, which will skew the starting grid by pushing many slower cars to the front during qualifying. It’s going to be a wild ride—let’s wish Chris luck! Check out more TDI Cup garage pics.

Check out the Amoco Ultimate Your Car Is Worth It Photo Contest. They’re giving away gas money on a weekly basis, and one Grand Prize Winner will get to go to France for 24 Hours Of Le Mans!

Continue reading "CarDomain Member Shows Off The TDI Cup Garage!" »

By Jen

AKA SusyBruisy

Here’s a few snaps of the American Le Mans Series cars in the pit lane waiting to get out on the track for afternoon practice. There was a bit of a shuffle following that session—the clean-diesel Peugeot 908 LMP1 ran the fastest lap, unseating both the Audi R10s, who tend to run at the top, with a lap time of 1 min, 6.952 sec. That beats the No. 2 Audi’s record-setting lap time of 1:07.091, run yesterday. Impressive, green one! More on Peugeot’s race program shortly, as I managed to make it to their "meet the press" shindig this evening. In the meantime, check out the Piloti Ford GT and a bunch of other ALMS cars in their pit stalls, below.

Check out the Amoco Ultimate Your Car Is Worth It Photo Contest. They’re giving away gas money on a weekly basis, and one Grand Prize Winner will get to go to France for 24 Hours Of Le Mans!

Continue reading "In The Pits At Road Atlanta" »

By Jen

AKA SusyBruisy

The B-K Motorsports team had an okay time of it out on the track today. Though the car smacked the wall during practice laps at Road Atlanta on Sunday, the team pulled together to get the car better than new for the official start of testing—they were repairing the last of the body damage on the monocoque shell when I stopped by their tent today. The new closed-cockpit car sure looked smashing out on the track in BP white, and its fastest lap time put it a little above the middle of the pack, in 17th position. The turbocharged Mazda 4 cyl is running very strong, and according to Andrew, one of the techs, they’re mostly going to be looking at getting the suspension completely dialed in during the final few days before the race. Follow the jump for more views of the new car on the track and in the garage.

Check out the Amoco Ultimate Your Car Is Worth It Photo Contest. They’re giving away gas money on a weekly basis, and one Grand Prize Winner will get to go to France for 24 Hours Of Le Mans!

Continue reading "Seeing Results: New BP Hardtop Lola Out On The Track!" »