Gary Sheehan: Driver and director of marketing, Cobb Tuning
With just 15 minutes left in qualifying, I rolled out onto the track, where our patchwork Scion felt surprisingly good but still needed some work. Power delivery was strong, but with no time to fit a proper rear wing there was significant oversteer in medium-speed corners and the high-speed corners were downright scary. So I drove conservatively and put in two safe laps to post a lap time before qualifying was checkered. With a fastest lap in the mid-2:02s, this was good enough to place us 22nd out of 68 teams.
The whole team was thrilled by this result and attacked the car yet again, throwing a fresh coat of white paint on the new body panels, installing a new rear wing, machining the upper control arms for more negative camber, and dialing in a good four-wheel alignment just in time for the race start. Driving to our spot on the grid, many of the other teams cheered and applauded, just like they did when we first tested our half-stripped Scion in the paddock after swapping on new suspension arms. This show of support brought a tear to my eye and I radioed to the team to tell them about the warm welcome our tC just received.
As the green flag dropped, the noise of 68 race cars around me was awesome. I stuck to our plan and took it easy going into turn 1, staying toward the outside and watching things develop. Despite playing it safe, I accidentally passed six cars on the first lap. Many of the other drivers were so intent on the inside line and fighting it out with their neighbors that I just drove around the outside of the traffic jams. After a few more laps, the car felt friendly to me and I started to really pick up the pace.
That’s when I uncovered an ugly quirk in our car. Our tC still really liked to oversteer in turn 8 and I nearly threw the car off the track in the same place it rolled a couple of days earlier. It took me several laps to learn to get all of my braking for turn 8 done early and then get back on the throttle before ever turning the wheel into the corner. But the Scion felt surprisingly good otherwise, so I kept pushing and working my way through traffic, with my 74-lap opening stint moving our tough little tC up as high as Fifth Place overall with a fastest lap of 1:58.5.
Jeff Courtney: Driver of the World Challenge Viper
Having just learned the track on Friday, thanks to Cindi Lux and the MMSP team who let me find the line in their Mustang and Jason from Hooverspeed who was also cool enough to let me get a little extra seat time in one of their Spec Miatas, it was finally my turn to take the wheel in the Scion. Having Marshall on the radio with me was a real highlight, since at one point in the race I passed a Viper (similar to the one I race in World Challenge), and Marshall had a real field day with this. I almost had to pull over from laughing so hard!
But things started to get a little more serious toward the end of my first session, when we were about three or four hours into the race. First I got T-boned pretty good in turn 10, which did a little body damage but didn’t seem to hurt the car otherwise, and then I noticed fourth gear starting to become harder and harder to engage. Not a good gear to lose at Thunderhill, since fourth is the gear we spend the most time in at this circuit.
After Jeff’s stint in the car, Andrew went for his first laps since the rollover. To his credit, he did a great job keeping the pace while using just third and fifth gears for most of his session.