[JC]

Gary's recap from NASIOC...

OK, well, this is long overdue! I don't even know where to start!

Man, what a ride Long Beach was! Seriously, it felt like the four days I was down there stretched out a couple of weeks. I'm still recovering and I didn't even have to work on the car.

Everything is still pretty much a blur. I'll just put up some random cool memories as they come to me.

World Challenge GT and the Long Beach GP really are big time! On Thursday, John Horton from West Coast Vipers brought us a few scooters to get around the paddock with. Marshall and I took them out on track to do a few recon laps so that Marshall and I could discuss some of the more critical point on the track. So there I am, out surveiling the track, right alongside Christiano Dematta, Adrian Fernandez, Christian Fittipadi, etc., all doing the same thing. Pretty sweet!

After the first lap, Marshall went back to the paddock and I just circulated for several laps, just getting the feel of the track. At one point I noticed a whole gaggle of people standing around the fountain turn after having just piling out of several minivans. I slowed down as I approached them, looking for a way through. As I go through, a little guy in the front gives me a nod and a quick wave. What the hell is Frankie Muniz waving at me for?! He sure as hell doesn't know who I am. I must've looked like a race car driver or something! I make my way through the rest of the Pro Celebrity drivers and move on. Very strange feeling!

Marshall introduced me to Andy Pilgrim, who proceded to share his wealth of WCGT experience with me over the next 15 minutes. What a cool guy! He definitely accelerated my learning curve and provided several points that definitely helped me prepare for my first WCGT race. And he made himself available for me to ask questions throughout the weekend, which I took him up on. What an honor to have the series champion help out the most recent rookie and make him feel welcome. Thanks Andy!

The Cadillac team was gracious enough to have us work out of their trailer with them over the weekend. It was a little odd to be changing into my racing suit mixed in with all these Caddy guys that I didn't know. But they were all really cool, friendly and easy to talk to. David Spitzer is a VERY nice guy and was always willing to listen to what I had to say and offer advice based on his experience. The most awkward moment of the weekend was opening the sliding door into the trailer to meet Ron Fellows in his underwear as he was suiting up for practice. "Hey, sorry about that Ron! Ha, I'm the new guy, can you tell? Just let me know the next time you want to show the world your underwear and I'll be the guy to open the door!" sheesh. Ron was a really nice guy as well.

The waiting just about killed me. These guys head out to grid really early. We get out there and wait. I must've been strapped in for 45 minutes prior to the first practice at 5:30pm on Friday. At least Saturday practice and Sunday qualifying was nice and early in the morning and the wait didn't seem long at all. But race day, holy crap. I'm all keyed up to get out in my first WCGT race and the cars are in pre-grid an hour beforehand. AHHHHH!!!!! But it was a great time to just hang out with the crew and chat. It was one of the few times they weren't busting their asses getting the car ready for a session. Their work was done and they could finally relax a bit. Thanks for all the hard work!

I don't know who it was, but while I was sitting on the starting grid on Shoreline Drive, I distinctly heard someone shout, "Kick some ass, Gary!" or something like that. I don't remember exactly what was yelled out, but I do remember clearly hearing my name and cracking a huge smile. I gave a thumbs up out the window and I hope whoever said it saw it. Thank you, to whoever it was, because I still had that smile plastered on my face as I dumped the clutch when the red lights went out!

Surreal moment. On the parade lap just prior to the start I was going through the Fountain corner and Andy Pilgrim drove right past me on my right, going the opposite direction! WTF?! As I'm radioing in to Marshall to find out what happens to Andy for the start, he goes zipping past me on the left on one of the straights. Craziness.

Speaking of which, I had decided to go to the outside for the race start. Just seemed like the best place to go with the room that we had. Shoreline seems really tight there, so any kind of pass off the line was going to be snug. When the lights went out the STi just WENT! I quickly steered left to get around the Vette in front of me. I was already about to overlap him before he started rolling, but when he did, he came right over on me. I thought I was done. I slammed on the brakes and steered towards the wall as close as I could without hitting it. I still remember waiting for the crunch that never came. When I we were clear of each other, I was nearly stopped and dead last. Oh well.

Turn 1 wasn't nearly the mess I expected it to be. Everyone checked up pretty early, minded their manners and we all got through clean. It was like a really aggressive traffic jam! I got in front of that yellow vette in all the traffic and took a few defensive lines through the next corners to keep him there. All of a sudden, Andy goes past me on the right going in to turn 6. He had to start from pit lane and easily caught up to the pack with how slow we were going through the corners. Then, on the straight, gone!

Our car was really underpowered and overweight for this event, so I settled down to try to turn in some good clean fast laps (as fast as the car would go anyway). I have to say that flying down Shoreline at 140mph with the spectators on the left and pits on the right is a thrilling experience! It became even MORE thrilling when I went for the brakes at my reference point and the pedal went right to the floor. As I released the pedal, it S-L-O-W-L-Y came back up and I pushed it to the floor again. As I waited for the pedal to come up a third time I began the thought process of which tire barrier would be the best one to hit at over 100mph. No panic, just here's the current situation, figure out the best way to deal with it. When I got pedal pressure on the fifth stroke I felt like Marty McFly when he finally got the time machine DeLorean to start after banging his head on the steering wheel in "Back to the Future." I got the car stopped deep in the runoff and radioed in to Marshall that I had no brakes.

When I got the car back on track the brakes were so bad I wasn't sure how I was going to get it back to the pits. It took two full strokes to get any braking for the fountain turn, and another two for the following corner. As I was limping around towards 9, 10 and 11, I had figured out that while I didn't immediately have brakes when I wanted them, when I did finally get them, pedal feel was right and friction felt absolutely normal. So I decided to stay out a lap and experiment.

At the end of the next lap I knew I could keep the car out on track. By the end of the following lap I was getting a feel of how many pedal strokes were required for each corner. Six for turn 1 at 140mph, one for the fountain, one for turn 3, one for turn 4, three for turn 5, etc. By the end of that lap I felt confident enough in the situation to start picking up the pace. Within a couple more laps I was at least back to my qualifying laptime and trying to hustle the car through the apex and corner exit.

It wasn't an exact science. Sometimes I needed an extra pedal stroke into turn one. Sometimes only one braking channel would grab and the car would pull violently to the right or left. There was some excitement when I would let someone go by and tuck in behind them, then start my early braking pumping. One time I was too close to a Porsche and I remember as I was staring at his taillights and pumping the pedal thinking to myself "please don't brake yet, please don't brake yet!" Then, just after I got my brakes back, his brakelights lit up! Whew! The last thing I wanted to do was take out a competitor in my first race!

For the rest of the distance I just raced against the new challenge I had. I learned a lot and came out of it without a scratch on the car and a whole racefull of experience. The entire crew congratulated me and just made me feel great about the whole thing.

It wasn't exactly how we wanted the weekend to go, but we all did a fantastic job as a team and we impressed a lot of important people, including the SCCA and the other drivers.

OK, I'm done for now. Feel free to ask me anything and you'll jog my memory of other stuff worth talking about. Like the time two women came up together and asked me to sign body parts...

Marshall did an amazing job pulling this effort together in such a short amount of time and all of the guys that contributed went well above and beyond the call of duty. Many, many thanks to all involved!!!

Gary
#99 Subaru STi
World Challenge GT