The Bloody Grand Prix

SAKHIR, BAHRAIN – After a very controversial Grand Prix race in the Kingdom of Bahrain, Red Bull Racing’s Sebastien Vettel drove to a significant victory. Lotus driver Kimi Raikkonen mounted a very strong challenge to Vettel, especially considering that he started from the 11th starting position. Kimi was running strong at the end, but a late-race tire change gave Vettel the edge. The second Lotus car driven by Romain Grosjean placed third.

Team Red Bull began the season poorly with weak performances in the first three races. With its first win in 2012, the Renault team has signaled the competition that it is still a contender. “I think we had to work extremely hard in the first couple of races,” said Vettel of his win. “We were not where we wanted to be so therefore I’m extremely happy that we had a much better weekend here. Friday morning, the first time I went out, I felt much happier with the car balance, so I think we found a reasonable package that seemed to work on this circuit pretty well so all in all, I’m very pleased.”

Lotus needed to make a strong performance in Bahrain. The critics had been tough on the 2007 World Champion, but Kimi and his team put in a solid performance. “But at least we got the podium with both cars. After the last race we tried hard and failed, and probably people thought we were a bit stupid. Even after yesterday with what we did,” commented Raikkonen. “But it turned out to be the right decision, and I think the team deserves what we have achieved now. We have been working hard. We’ve not been 100 per cent happy with how the weekends have run so far but finally we’ve got some proper results for the team, so it’s an important step.” Romain Grosjean also made it clear that he is a potential race winner with his first podium finish. “I think we are doing some pretty good starts since the beginning, except Melbourne,” said Grosjean. “Malaysia, China and here we have some very good starts… I have to say that I really enjoyed the first stint, the car was fantastic on the option and I could overtake Mark Webber and then Lewis Hamilton.” I believe there is more to come from this young man.

The controversy of the race was due to the political and social unrest in the country stemming from last year’s Arab Spring revolts. 50 people have been killed in Bahrain since the protests began. Last year’s F1 race was cancelled, and many groups have criticized F1 and Bernie Eccelstone for the return of the race to the island-state. Though the race went on without incident, violent clashes between the police and anti-government protesters occurred during the week prior to the race. Drivers and workers reported attacks by Molotov-cocktail wielding youths.

Team Force India actually sat out the Friday afternoon practice session due to security fears. This allegedly so enraged Eccelstone, that he ordered that the team be excluded from television coverage. Bernie reportedly commented that "nobody cares" about the cars that are not in the running for pole. However, the F1 chief executive told reporters: "I suspect it (the blackout) was more to do with the Bahrain laws on no alcohol advertising. They have a whisky company prominently on the car. They should have taken it off. The TV could not show that." McLaren and Sauber removed their usual alcohol sponsors from the cars; however Red Bull was aptly covered although sporting their Singha Beer logos. Force India's deputy team boss Bob Fernley, in charge this weekend in Vijay Mallya's absence, would not comment.

HPD, ORECA and Corvette Racing On Top At The Beach

LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA – Saturday was a spectacular Southern California day for the running of the Long Beach ALMS, the second race of the 2012 series. The Muscle Milk Pickett Racing P1 entry piloted by Graf/Luhr made history by posting their second consecutive overall victory at Long Beach. The #06 Soloson Import ORECA FLM09 of Alex Popow and Ryan Dalziel finished first in the Le Mans Prototype Challenge (LMPC) class (third overall) in Saturday’s Tequila Patrón American Le Mans Series at Long Beach after starting on the pole. Corvette Racing drivers Tommy Milner and Oliver Gavin won a hard-fought battle, claiming a GT class victory “at the Beach.”


Starting second behind the #16 Dyson Racing car, Graf/Luhr took the lead 25 minutes into the race, and the HPD prototype dominated thereafter except for a 10-lap stint after pitting for fuel. "It was a great day for Muscle Milk Pickett Racing with this historic win,” commented Graf. “Our HPD ARX-03a ran very good all day long with no problems. We had to push very hard though after our pit stop to get back what we lost after coming in for a splash of fuel under yellow. So, I actually got my qualifying in today!”


The No. 4 Compuware Corvette pair completed 84 laps on the 1.968-mile temporary circuit, finishing 4.26 seconds ahead of the runner-up No. 56 BMW. Antonio Garcia and Jan Magnussen brought their No. 3 Compuware Corvette C6.R home in fourth place after a first-lap accident left their car battered and bruised. The win was the first for the Milner/Gavin driver combination, and Milner's first career ALMS victory. "Finally a win!" exclaimed the 26-year-old racer. "I've been racing in the ALMS since 2006, and I've had podium finishes and great races. I felt confident that we had a car today that would be competitive and comfortable to drive. We were racing hard, but I kept a gap around me and it worked out well this time. Today the Corvette Racing team had the best combination, and I'm very happy to be part of that."


The Porsche GT3-RSR teams had a difficult time at Long Beach. A canceled qualifying session on Friday dashed the hopes of Bergemeister/Long Flying Lizard Motorsports entry for a good starting position. Though the street-course is notorious to passing, Long was able to move quickly from 10th to 4th, but a punctured tire, causing them to drop down a lap, dashed their hopes for the podium. The best placing Porsche of Team Falken Tire driven by Henzeler/Sellers managed a sixth place finish. “Rain during the two-hour free practice, resulting in a wet track, and subsequent cancellation of qualifying, did not enable our customer teams enough track time to set up the new Porsche 911 GT3 RSR for its best performance potential. The competitors who finished ahead of us at Long Beach all have a bigger restrictor – thus more horsepower – than we do. We must work with the American Le Mans Series to find a solution that gives us comparable classification to our competitors in this area,” said Hartmut Kristen, head of Porsche Motorsport.

The Fuel Injection Era

AVONDALE, AZ – In the second race of the “Fuel Injection Era” Tony Stewart experiences a failure dashing his hopes for a good finish. On lap 249 of the 312 lap Phoenix 500, Stewart shut his engine off to conserve fuel. The engine wouldn’t restart, and Stewart needed a push from a wrecker to get it restarted. "A breaker switch in the system that's there -- I don't understand totally why it's there -- but it kicked off," Addington said. "It doesn't need it when it's running. But when he shut the car off, if you ever shut it off, it won't let the car fire back up… We had no way of knowing that's what had kicked off, or that it would do that under racing conditions. It's not what we wanted. We had a fast car and thought we would get a top-five [finish] out of it, but that's the way it goes sometimes." Lesson One – Carburetors do not have breakers.


Denny Hamlin ran a good race at Phoenix finishing first in the Subway Fresh Fit 500 keeping contender Kevin Harvick at bay in the final laps. Lucky for Hamlin, Harvick lost fuel pressure with only two laps to go, but still managed a second place finish. "I don't know where this came from," Hamlin said. "We were solidly off in practice. We were off, but we kept getting it better and closer and closer to being competitive, but I had no idea that we were going to fire off like we did today." This track was not as good to him in 2010 when his Championship run was dashed with a poor finish.


Greg Biffle placed third placing him in second in points following his third place finish at Daytona. Matt Kenseth finished in fourth place leaving him fourth in points.


In other news, NASCAR officials penalized Jimmie Johnson 25 points for improper bodywork modifications at Daytona. Crew Chief Chad Knaus and Car Chief Ron Malec have been suspended from the next six Sprint Car events. Knaus was also issued a $100,000 fine.




The penalties were issued after inspectors found that the C-pillars of Johnson’s car were illegally modified. Officials cut the posts from the car requiring the Hendrick team to fly new parts to the track to be welded in prior to the final inspection. Unfortunately Johnson crashed in the opening laps of the race yielding only 2 championship points. Johnson started the Phoenix race with -23 points. Hendrick is appealing the ruling.

Roush-Yates On Top Yet Again

DAYTONA BEACH, FL – This year, Daytona has certainly seen its share of Roush Yates race engine cross the finish line in first place. After taking top honors at the Rolex 24 Hour, qualifying two cars on the front row of the 500, winning one of the Duel 250s and on Monday Night, or rather, Tuesday morning they clinched the Daytona 500 with Matt Kenseth sailing across the finish line ahead of Dale Earnhardt Jr and teammate Greg Biffle. The Roush—Yates engines equipped with Burns merge collectors had plenty of power at the end though there were some water leaks early in the race. "We had a lot of problems -- it was spewing water," said Kenseth, who notched the 22nd Cup victory of his career. "I have to give a lot of credit to [engine builder] Doug Yates and the guys at the engine shop. We had great horsepower. I could get a pretty good start on the bottom and either Denny or Dale Jr. could push me for a while and then they just couldn't stay attached and I would get away from them just in time to get in front of Greg, and the two of us together could make some unbelievable speed. I have to thank Greg. We worked together really good all day long. He had a really fast car all day as well."



Dale Earnhardt Jr. was pushing second place Greg Biffle on the last lap but they could not gain on Kenseth. "I was waiting and waiting," Earnhardt said. "It looked like he might have been trying to make a move on the back straightaway, but nothing materialized there. Then we came off [Turn] 4, and I kind of waited till the last minute for him to have his opportunity to try to pass Matt, and nothing was happening, so I just pulled out and went around him." Denny Hamlin finished 4th with Jeff Burton rounding off the top five.



This Daytona 500 will go down in the books as probably the most bizarre in its history. Not only was the start delayed due to rain (first time in its 54 year history), Juan Pablo Montoya also crashed into a jet drier causing a great ball of fire (SEE VIDEO), and the wild action in the closing laps of the race added to a once-in-a-lifetime experience. On lap 160, Montoya pulled into the pits complaining of a transmission problem. After getting an all-ok from the pit crew, Montoya went back out on the track under a yellow, but lost control of the car and slammed into a jet dryer parked against the outside wall. The jet fuel on the dryer was ignited by the impact and the resultant blaze lit up the dusk sky. "Something failed in the rear of the car, and the car just spun into the jet dryer," Montoya said after a visit to the care center. "I left the pits and felt a really weird vibration, and I came back in and checked the rear end and [they] said it was OK, and I got into the back straight and we were going in fourth gear but wasn't going that fast. Every time I got on the gas, I could feel the rear squeezing. When I was telling the spotter to have a look how the rear was moving, the car just turned right."
This race was also Danica Patrick’s debut in Sprint Cup. Unfortunately for her, Trevor Bayne and Kurt Busch were taken out in an accident.

Lefevers/Jesel Record Breaking Run at El Mirage

Well the 2011 land speed racing season started off with a bang for us this year. Kevin LeFevers set a record at the opening El Mirage meet in May! The new record speed of 213.609 topped the old record of 208 by over 5 mph! This pass also got Kevin into the El Mirage “Dirty 2” club. The team came back to the dry lake bed in June to see if they could up their new record but only managed a best speed of 212 mph. The July meet was rained out so preparations were made to reconfigure the car for Bonneville Speed Week in August.



Bonneville was a mixed bag as we had a major storm on Sunday leaving a bit of a mushy course for the next couple of days. We also had problems of our own as first the ignition system failed then after fixing that the fuel system started giving us fits. We finally got the car running decent and both brothers made their best runs ever on the salt. First Ryan ran 230 mph shutting off in the middle mile and then Kevin managed a best top speed of 235 mph after a bit more work on the tune up.


Back to El Mirage for the September meet and another 212 mph run. However this was the fastest speed for this meet earning us a top time trophy so we were pretty stoked about that.


In October the team decided to focus on trying to get Ryan into the El Mirage 200 mph club by making him the primary driver, as the boy’s normally share driving duties. At this point in the season we had moved up to a high for us of 12th place in SCTA points. That was the good news. The bad news was there was no breeze that morning so we had a lot of “hanging dust” after a car made a pass. This is compounded by the sun moving more towards the center of the course as the month’s progress during the season shinning almost directly in the driver’s eyes on these early morning runs. As a result Ryan realized he was outside the timing traps at about three quarters of the way down course because he just couldn’t see. So he pulled the parachute and missed getting a time or any points for this meet. The last meet of the year saw some improvement in Ryan’s speed as he managed to eclipse the magic 200 mph barrier on the dirt for the first time with a best pass for the weekend of 203 mph.



The end result to our season was Kevin entering the El Mirage 200 mph Club, setting top time of the meet in September, Ryan exceeded 200mph on the dirt, and we also won the LSR club points championship.

Roush Yates Engines On The Pole At Daytona!

DAYTONA BEACH, FL – Just a few short weeks ago, I reported that Roush Yates engines dominated at the Rolex 24 Hour. Well, they are dominating again at the beach! Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle have qualified on the front row for the Daytona 500 making the folks at Roush Fenway Racing and Roush Yates Engines quite happy. Carl Edwards must also feel a sense of revenge after having Tony Stewart edge him out of the Championship last year on a tie-breaker. The RFR drivers have the only two spots set at this point in the Daytona line-up. The rest of the field will be determined by the Duel 150 qualifying races on Thursday. Edwards’ best lap averaged 194.738 mph while Biffle ran a 194.087 mph lap around the 2.5-mile oval. "This is a very, very speedy Fastenal [Ford] Fusion, and I appreciate [crew chief] Bob Osborne and all the work he's done," Edwards said. "[Engine builder] Doug Yates -- the engines are so important in this.” Burns Stainless is please to provide exhaust components to the Roush-Yates teams.

Danica Patrick makes her debut in the Daytona 500 with a guaranteed spot on the grid. Patrick will be the third woman to start this historic race. With a 191.738 mph lap, she was only able to qualify 30th due to an over-heating problem during her second qualifying lap. Danica felt quite happy with her performance, "It felt fine," she said. "It got a little hot on the water at the end, but other than that -- some water blowing out of the car -- but everybody did a good job. Everybody worked really, really hard on the cars.”


Sunday’s Budweiser Shootout ended poorly for Jeff Gordon who with only two laps to go made contact with Shootout winner Kyle Busch resulting in an eight-car crash (SEE VIDEO) that took him and other out of contention. After Gordon made contact with the 18 car, he hit the outside wall hard, slid onto the apron on his side then flipped three times. Gordon miraculously escaped with minor injuries including a stiff-neck, banged shin, and a cut on his finger. Gordon said that the wreck was due to an aggressive move on his part trying to push Busch too hard. "This is one of the things you're going to see a lot more from me this year. We're going to be aggressive," said Gordon, who won three times in 2011. "I've got an awesome race team, and a car capable of winning races, and I felt like we should have won more races last year than we did. I don't want to let those opportunities slip away, and I feel like we're going to try to make some opportunities as well."

Burns Stainless At The Daytona 24

Daytona Beach, FL – Ford wins it 1-2-3 at the 50th Daytona 24 hour! In an amazing 24 hour race, The Ford/Rileys powered by Burns Stainless customer Roush-Yates Engines finished 1, 2 and 3 ending a winless streak for Ford. This was also the first win by the Michael Shank Racing team. There were high hopes for the Daytona Prototype Corvettes that debuted at the race, but gremlins began appearing early in the race resulting in the Sun Trust Corvette retiring within the first few laps of the race.


There was also much speculation that Gainsco DP Corvette with Alex Gurney at the wheel might win the race. His father Dan won the inaugural race 50 years ago in a Type-19 Lotus, crossing the finishline powered only by his starter motor. It would have been a fitting tribute to his father. Alex led the race briefly after the first hour. Shortly after the 6-hour mark, there was a tough battle between Gurney and the DP Corvette dubbed “The Spirit of Daytona,” driven by Oliver Gavin. For several laps, Gurney gave chase to Gavin but a coolant system failure required Gurney to pit resulting in a short stint in the garage and a loss of 4-laps. A short time later, AJ Allmendinger mounted a more successful assault on the first place Corvette. Pressure by Allmendinger resulted in a mistake by Gavin allowing the Ford/Riley around.


The GT-class also resulted in a 1-2-3 sweep for the mighty GT3R Porsches. The #44 Magnus Racing GT3 piloted by Lally/Lietz/Potter/Rast claimed first place followed by the #67 TRG Porsche. Third place was had by the #59 Brumos Porsche with none other than Hurley Haywood at the wheel. The highest place non-Porsche in GT-class was the Stevenson Camaro GTR powered by a Katech-built LS-engine equipped with Burns-designed Tri-Y headers and collectors.


The Daytona 24 Hour race is quite a spectacle. When I first arrived at the track, I was overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the place. Though not my first visit to a super-speedway, I was still overwhelmed. Not only was I taken by the immensity of the place, the infield was like a circus – ferris-wheel and all. There were car corrals for Corvettes, Porsches, Minis, Mercedes. There were vendors selling everything from cigars to racing paraphenelia to funnel cakes and tequila. Nissan, Porsche and Chevrolet were there with big car displays. In the Fan Zone there was a large stage with a rock band playing to a large crowd. There were pretty girls all over. Some were giving out NOS drinks and the girls at the Continental Tire display were there to take a picture with you.


I finally made my way to the holy-of-holies, the garages. I first came upon the Daytona Prototype garages with the teams scrambling all over the cars getting them ready for the race. The Gainsco Corvette in its bright red paint scheme was quite stunning. You could tell that all things were not well at the Sun Trust Corvette garage as the engine was being removed and replaced and I could over-hear team members recounting the various issues with the car. The Roush Yates Engine technicians were putting the final touches on the Ford/Rileys of the Michael Shank Racing team.


Moving past the DP garages were the GT-class BMWs of Turner Racing. The bright yellow and blue paint schemes were quite noticeable. Then there was a sea of Porsches as far as the eye could see. The German marquee was well represented with 24 entered in the Rolex and 5 in the Continental Tire 200. Moving further through the garages I came upon the beautiful 458 Italias. Though they did not place well in the race (13th in the Rolex), there is something moving about the sumptuous low-slung Italian bodywork.


Daytona was also the North American debut of the Audi R8 race cars. The Audis looked very purposeful. The simple yet elegant racecars looked like they were there to conquer. The #51 APR entry was only able to complete 447 laps but you can bet that the company that campaigned the mighty TDIs and built a temporary 100-room hotel to house their team at Le Mans will be back in strength.

The first race of the weekend was the GRAND-AM Continental Tire 200. The Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge features sports cars manufactured from around the world, brought straight from the showroom floor, that race side by side with only minor modifications in the area of safety. Like the GRAND-AM Rolex Series, the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge races two classes at the same time: Grand Sport (GS) and Street Tuner (ST). The overall winner of the race was the Roush Performance Mustang Boss 302R GT co-driven by none other than Jack Roush Jr. The ST-class was won by the iMoto Racing MazdaSpeed 3 driven by Clunie / Kleinubing and equipped with a Burns Stainless sourced exhaust including Ultralight Racing mufflers.


After the sun goes down, the infield circus transforms into Las Vegas. People dancing, drinking and watching the cars. Patron Tequila has a large bar setup in the infield serving drinks up until 25-laps from the finish. There are campfires all over. It is interesting to note that with the efficiency of the modern race cars the smell of unburned fuel in the exhaust is overcome by the smoky campfire smoke. There is really just too much to write about concerning this race. It is certainly one of the most important races in the world, and is a very unique experience. If you haven’t been, you need to go!