DRIVER BLOGS - RICKY TAYLOR TALKS ABOUT ALMOST FINISHING ON THE PODIUM AT MONTREAL
This weekend was REALLY tough! The entire team pushed through some major problems during practice, kept confident, kept pushing hard, and in the end of the day the team came home with a fantastic result of fourth which is the teams, as well as my personal best result in the Grand Am Series. Everyone in the paddock looks at us as the small and relatively inexperienced team in the paddock and at this point in the season I think everyone in the series is starting to realize that Beyer Racing can really perform and run up front consistently.
Although it was just a two day weekend and a two hour race it felt like a full week with a 12 hour race with all of the stress and hard work that the team put in. We started the weekend with a morning practice where we saw brake temperatures like never before which raised quite a serious problem because at a track like Montreal the majority of the laptime is made up under the brakes and what is not made up by the actual brake zone is determined by how efficiently you can get through the brake zones. So we had a real brake problem and as it was we would not have made it through the race without losing our brakes. So we tested many different brake combinations and eventually we found a combination that was not quite as quick but we could make it through the race.
We continued to struggle with the car through the rest of practice and qualifying and ended up qualifying in the 12th position. Mike would start the race for us and he did a great job, coming across the finish line of the first lap in 7th place. He had a very difficult stint, the conditions were changing every lap sometimes being stuck on the track with slick tires in the wet conditions, and then sometimes with rain tires in the drying conditions. Mike continued to run very competitive times and pitted the car on the lead lap under yellow and very treacherous and changing conditions.
The track had been drying prior to me getting in the car and as soon as I got in it had began to rain again so a few laps after I had gotten in the car we pitted for rain tires from the 10th position. This was a turning point in the race, everyone was on rains and the rest of the race would be strategically very challenging. Everyone continued to run on the rain tires in the wet conditions and we were at times the quickest car on the track. Then the rain stopped and the track began to dry again, the cars had formed a dry line around the entire track, and many of the front running teams pitted to put on slick tires to go to the finish. We elected to stay out on the rain tires to make sure it would not rain again and we would be caught out. So in the situations the driver has to really protect his rain tires or else they will wear very quickly, the best thing to do is to look for standing water on the straight aways and drive through it to cool the tires. The strategy paid off beautifully when the rain came again and forced the cars on slicks to go back to the rain tires which ended up with our car in second place. Unfortunately the windshield wiper had stopped working when it began to rain again. We were running second for a while and were ahead of the number 12 Penske Racing car and we could hold him off and run on pace with him but the spray was building up on the windshield. Eventually he got by as a result of me making a mistake in the third corner. By now the water build up was too much and we had dropped from being right on the pace to being 10 seconds off the pace due to the lack of visibility. I could not do anything, I was following the GT cars and following their brake lights as my only reference as to where the track was going. Next was the number 99 Gainsco car as he was able to get by with two laps to go bumping us from a podium position. We had a very comfortable lead over the fifth place car to where I could just keep the car on the road and finish the race.
It was a great result and considering the struggles I am very happy for the guys on the team because they really deserve a solid result. Thank you for supporting us along the way and we will try to carry the momentum into the next race in Tooele, Utah in two weeks.
