Getting serious in the Glen
Sometimes everyone has to do something serious.
I had to do something serious this weekend, move house at uni. I didn't realise I had accumulated so much stuff. Okay, so I had some furniture (TV Cabinet, Small Shelves, Bar) but still, I had enough stuff to fill the back of my parent’s Jaguar XF Sportbrake (with the seats down) 4 times! Apparently I’m a hoarder.
But you know, moving stuff is one thing, but making your previous house clean enough to sell is a tough job. It took ages! And we were looking forward to just throwing everything in the new house and just sitting down with a glass of wine. But no. New house was not clean, and full of problems, yay.
Eventually, after an entire weekend of cleaning, packing, unpacking and cleaning, I got to relax on Sunday evening (after the 3 hour drive back of course). And how did I relax? With the Sahlens 6 Hours of The Glen.
Now I had no idea that there was a race circuit in upstate New York, but now I do know, I need to go. Combine a trip to NYC with a weekend’s racing? Yes please. As I have said, if someone wants to take me, I’ll love them forever, and I will pay them in cookies and hugs. (Other baked goods are available if you do not like cookies. But who doesn’t like cookies?)
ANYWAY.
As I have come to expect with the Tudor United Sportscar Championship, the 6 hour race from Watkins Glen was brilliant! Nonstop action and fights for position up and down the order in all four classes, all the way through the race. For anyone who doesn’t know, TUSCC is similar to FIA WEC in that there are 4 classes, two prototype classes and two GT. The top prototype class doesn’t have LMP1 cars like WEC, it has a mixture of two prototype classes, Daytona Prototypes and LMP2 cars. GT classes I believe follow the same idea as in WEC (one pro, one pro-am).
In GTD (GT Daytona) it was great to see Patrick Dempsey and his team bring their Porsche 911 home in fourth, only a few seconds behind the #44 Porsche in 3rd, would’ve been great to see them up on the podium. The GTLM class was won by the #3 Corvette piloted by Jan Magnussen and Antonia Garcia, giving them their third straight win. Andy Priaulx and the #55 BMW Z4 looked like it could challenge, but a 75 second (I think) stop and hold penalty saw them fall way down the order.
The prototype challenge class was dominated by the #54 Core Autosport machine driven by Jon Bennett, Colin Braun and James Gue. Their latest victory sees that team retain the lead on the PC championship.
The prototype class gave a lot of excitement throughout the race, with the #90 VisitFlorida Corvette almost constantly battling the #42 Oak Racing Nissan Morgan. I lost count of how many times the lead changed, but the final hour or so was mesmerizing. With one and a half hours to go, Gustavo Yacaman in the #42 was in 4th place. He very quickly got the car into second and fighting with its main race rival, the #90. Then in an amazing move, Yacaman took the lead and began to open the gap. After a pit stop, Alex Brundle took the wheel of the car, and after everyone had filtered through their pitstops, began extending the #42’s lead of the race. Nobody quite knew who was doing what with fuel, everyone’s stories kept changing, but at that point the #42 would need to probably do a splash and dash. Twenty minutes (ish) before the end saw a full course yellow coming out for an incident between cars #23 and #08. Came to the restart, and you quickly saw the difference between the Daytona Prototypes and the P2 cars. After one corvette quickly unlapped himself, the #90 with Richard Westbrook at the wheel, in one good move, breezed past the #42 as if it were standing still (Alex Brundle actually said over the radio ‘He just drove past me. This isn’t racing!’). And before the battle could resume, the track went back to full course yellows thanks to a big collision between a Prototype challenge car and one of the Ford Ecoboost Daytona Prototypes. It all looked over, but kudos to the track marshals and the stewards for clearing the incident quickly and giving one more green flag lap. And it was so worth it, a one lap sprint to the finish, it was brilliant. When it gets down to it, the DPs and the P2s may throw out similar laptimes, but each is strong in different parts of the Glen. So you had a major battle which showed the strengths of both cars, and it went right down to the wire, with Westbrook defending brilliantly from a very aggressive and very quick Brundle. But it was one lap too few for the #42, Westbrook took the win (the first for the team) after a great drive and the Oak team came home in 2nd after a stellar performance.
The one lap sprint was great for the other classes too, the #3 Corvette may have won GTLM but the #91 Dodge Viper was nipping at his heels the whole way round, it was so close! Seriously well done to everyone involved in getting those cars one more racing lap, it was FAB.
The next round of TUSCC is in Canada on the 13th of July. But before that is the British GP, on the 6th of July. I found some pictures from when I went to the British GP, way back in 2005, so have this to whet your F1 appetite:
I should probably watch it, but if not, expect another blog maybe after the 13th of July. I fancy talking a bit about FIA Formula E, and something dear to me. So that’s all for now, until next time!
