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| Friday Morning Paddock Patter At LRP |
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Top Left - Bill Smith
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© Andrew S. Hartwell
We walked the paddock this morning and talked with some of the racers and support people here at Lime Rock Park this weekend. We learned a bit about tires, about the differences in setting up a prototype and a GT car for this track, and we got a feel for how one team is approaching this race.
First up we talked with Bill Smith, a crewman on the Blackforest Motorsports team. He was sorting out tires when we caught up to him to ask what task he was addressing.
What I do is check the tires for wear and then deflate the ones that can't be used again. I also remove the weights off the back of the wheels and any hard rubber that might be caught in there. Then I take them over to the Hoosier tire guys and they pull the old rubber off and mount new tires. Then I bring them back here and put aluminum tape on the weights to keep them from falling off. Next I let all the air out of the tires and then I purge it with nitrogen and refill them with nitrogen.
As the tires build heat on the race track they expand and contract differently with air in them then they do with the nitrogen. The nitrogen holds a more consistent pressure.
Tires are an expense every team can't avoid. We wondered how many tires Blackforest would need for the four cars they are running this weekend.
We figure we are going to need - for practice, qualifying and the race, plus a couple extra sets in case we have a puncture - about 32 tires, or 8 sets per car.
In the DP class there are limits on the number of tires a team can have access to. Blackforest Motorsports owner Tom Nastasi told us that there is no limit for the GT cars. Grand Am says that if you want to spend all your money on tires go ahead and do it!
Talking With Mike Johnson
Mike Johnson is here shepherding the Stevenson Motorsports crew with preparations for the #57 Chevrolet Corvette running in the Rolex GT race. We asked him to tell us what sort of preparations were necessary for running a big Corvette on such a small track.
The track is so bumpy what we are trying to do is soften the car up a bit and make it more compliant with the bumps. The bumps really upset the balance of the Brakes and we can't stop the car as well, so we are working on the brakes and making sure the car is stable as it turns into the corners. We also need to make sure the back end is stable so they can apply the power and come off the corner quickly.
Also the local guys have a real advantage. The guys that have been driving here a long time are usually fast and Marc Bunting is great at driving here. I think we are going to do real well.
Johnson has done real well here at Lime Rock before. As the head of the Archangel Motorsports team campaigning a Lola open-top prototype in the pre-Daytona Prototype days of Grand Am, his team went on to win a season championship in their class.
I was here with my Archangel Lola team and we won in the prototype. I think it was 2001. But the set up for the prototype and the GT cars are complete opposites. The prototype is so based on downforce. If you run the car too soft it runs itself into the ground. You can run it soft but you have to put a lot of packer on it or stiffen it up to run it low to the ground so you can get downforce. A packer is something you stick in the shock so it can only come down so far. In the GT series the rules call for a minimum ride height of 3.5 inches. With that you can actually run the car as soft as possible and then let the thing take down to the ground a little bit. Since the prototypes back then didn't have a minimum ride height you would be scraping the ground anyway.
Of course, the conditions here are the same for everybody so you just try to make the car go as fast as you can!
The #57 car debuted at the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona in January. The Crawford built chassis is still a work in process, in terms of nailing the set up, and Johnson would like to learn<
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