ChumpCar at the Glen
Is there anything better than spending a weekend at Watkins Glen? How about spending the weekend at the Glen tracking your car? Maybe, tracking your car in an endurance race! How about three days of racing? 18 hours in total to push your team and your car to the limit. Top that off by getting on the podium twice – it certainly is nice. Even better, having a car running well is absolutely the highlight! To make it even better than that, telling yourself that you cannot attend and then getting a last minute call to drive a fast car at the full track in Optima Batteries ChumpCar World Series Memorial Day weekend event at WGI. Four hours Friday. Eight hours Saturday. Six hours Sunday. What a great weekend!
Friday evening and the garage was packed, The teams were busy preparing the cars for the rest of the weekend. For many it was the first time out, but quite a few have already seen the track several times this spring. I went through the garage looking for my teammates and admiring some of the ChumpCars.
Two of my favourites were parked beside each other. The awesome Cougar of the Drunken Squirrels and the nefarious Neon of Mopar4Life.
Got my gear in to be teched and found that I'd arrived just after a protest had been lodged against Friday's first place car. The Team McQueen Dinoco 240SX, seen in my ChumpCar Canada CTMP article, had been protested. It won one race at CTMP. It won twice at New Jersey. It led Friday's event at WGI by a significant margin – and apparently the post-race impound was quite crowded as the car was examined. The protest was deemed justified and the team penalized several laps.
Saturday morning the racing was back to business. This was an 8 hour endurance session – twice the length of Friday's race. At the morning driver's meeting it was announced that the Dinoco 240SX had been penalized, dropping it down to twelfth place. A tough call, but that's racing. Team McQueen chose to head home after getting this news.
Business as usual for the #63 car, team Simon Says was ready for a fast day of racing. Very consistent too! Consistency is the name of the game in endurance racing. Fast and consistent, you've got a podium combination.
