By Jonathan Macri
The race events for the Grand Prix of Long Beach began on Thursday April 5th as I attended my first autograph session with the Toyota CART Atlantic Series. I had already been in California for two weeks, so I was used to the climate and trained for the conditions of the race. My first autograph session took place at an Art and Wine Gallery which was really different for me. The people that attended did not know much about racing so they were very fascinated by the number of drivers that were there. I met some very interesting people and had a good conversation about my racing career. I left the Gallery at 7p.m. and headed for dinner and to bed because we had an early session at 8a.m.. I got to the track at 6:30a.m., to review some data and the track. I was strapped in the car with 10 minutes before the session. The first few laps were just familiarizing myself with the track since I had never been on it before. I started to pick up speed and got a good feel of the car in our 25 minute session. After the morning practice I was 8th. We reviewed data within the team and decided to make a few changes on the car. 8th was a good place in my first session out on the track, so the team was happy and so was I. We went to qualifying with a lot more confidence expected to move up on the grid. The session went fairly well with only having one red flag. My times didn’t come down until the end of the session. We ended up 9th with a time of 1:19:697. My teammate Tony Ave ended up 7th and Stephan Roy 15th as he ran into problems. We felt we could have qualified better, so we looked forward to the next qualifying session the following day.
The following morning I got to the track and noticed that it was still wet from the over night showers. We didn’t change the setup yet because it looked like it was going to dry up. The session was 40 minutes long and if it didn’t rain anymore the track would probably dry up. So sitting on the grid with rain tires the rain started to come down and I now knew that there was no chance of bettering my qualifying time. Near the end of the session we put on a new set of slicks to scrub them in for the race. The session ended and we only accomplished scrubbing in our race tires but it looked like it wouldn’t rain for the race.
So for the race I was starting in 9th position and since the pole sitter picked drivers right, I was starting on the outside. My plan for the race was to just finish. The track was very difficult to pass on so I knew I needed a good start. We had two pace laps and the field was coming around for the green flag. My teammate, Tony started in front of me and he got a slow start as he cut to the inside. Around the easy curve on the straightaway everyone moved and crowded the inside. I had a good run on the field so I decided to go to the outside by myself and take the racing line. I got up beside Tony and was able to sneak up behind him into corner one as I gained two spots. We did one full lap and the pace car came out for the first caution of the race. In the first lap I had an under steer in the car so I radio in to Bill Fickling and asked him what I should do with the sway bars in the car. We decided to move the front sway bar to full soft and if it wasn’t better move the rear bar to a harder setting. After 5 laps with a full course yellow, we got the green flag and we were back to racing. I was keeping up with Tony but the under steer was still there and I was getting out of the corners bad because of it. Two laps later the car behind me was able to get a good run on me down the front straight and pulled beside me into corner one. I was now into 8th place, so I kept my cool and was able to stay behind Lavin. After 6 laps my car started coming to me. I was able to get up beside Lavin on the back straight. He held it on the outside around the corner and he was able to regain his 7th place. Because Lavin and me were fighting back and forth Moran was able to catch up. When he finally got behind me I was still fighting with Lavin trying to get by him. Moran got a good run on me down the straight and went by me in corner one. I stayed cool and stayed with both of them as they started to battle for position. I got back in the race as me and Moran switched places a few more times. With 4 laps to go I got a good run on Moran down the back straight and passed him. That next lap I tried to put a gap between Moran, and me as it was my fastest lap of the race at a 1:20:21. I caught up to Lavin near the end of the race but wasn’t close enough to put a move on him.
Over all it was a good race. I got a lot of racing experience with battling with some of the top drivers in the series. My teammate Tony finished 5th and Stephan was in 11th before he had engine failure. So now getting my feet wet in the Toyota CART Atlantic Series I now know what to expect in my future races.
On April 13, we are going to test at Phoenix International Speedway to prepare for our first oval race in Nazareth. For Nazareth I would like to finish in the top five, so for now I’ll continue working hard toward the next race and we’ll see what happens.
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