10-19-2003 - Fran Am 1600 race - Buttonwillow CA

Saturday 10-18-2003

Practice went well on Friday.  The test the team did here 1 month ago helped.  It was the first time all year Colin went to a track that he had driven on before.

On Saturday Colin captured pole by .8 seconds on used tires.

A shortage of tires forced Fran Am officials to require all teams to use tires from the last race in Phoenix.  With the budget Colin has had this year he has been picking through the tires the Fran Am 2000 Pro teams have junked and practicing on their throw away tires all year.  Good practice for this weekend.

On the start Colin got the jump, but not much.  John Knudsen #2 was right along side into turn one.

Colin had the inside clean line and John had to back off and tuck in behind.

At the end of lap 1 Colin had a 1 second lead and it was pretty boring from there on as he pulled out .6 seconds per lap to take the victory by 7 seconds.

The battle for second was hard fought with Brad Coleman taking the spot over Knudsen and Darryl O'Young 4th.

Taking pole and getting fast lap of the race as well as winning extended Colin's points lead to 15 points with 3 races to go.

John Knudsen (shown here with Colin) is second in points.

For Sunday we have a few things to try to the car as it was not perfect in the race.

Sunday 10-19-2003

We tried some things in the warm up to combat the severely worn tires we were forced to run due to Fran Am being unable to get tires from France.

So we made some changes to the car and ended up with a warm up time .1 seconds off of his qualifying time from Saturday.

Some small changes for qualifying and Colin was on pole for the first 2 laps of the session.  Then John Knudsen spun and the session was halted.  Colin came to the pits for a quick rear wing flap change.  With 2 laps maximum left in the session Brad Coleman grabbed the top spot from Colin by .2 seconds.  Coleman had taken the checkered flag and Colin was on his last lap.  Colin knew that he was .2 seconds off pole and went for it, locking the left front tire into the "Star Mazda" corner but still recording his fastest first segment of the weekend. 

As Colin crossed the line under the checkered flag all the crew heard on the radio from him was "that's pole."  Colin looked at his dash board for the lap time and saw a time .7 seconds faster than Brad Coleman and .4 seconds faster than his track record from Saturday.

The tires were really getting worn and the flat spot from the qualifying lock up did not help.

On the start Colin held the inside with Brad outside in the red car and Darryl O' Young 3rd in the blue car.

In the right hand turn #1, Brad tried to hold the outside line but could not, letting Darryl into 2nd.

After lap one Colin had a .5 second lead.  By about lap 5 he had 2 seconds on Darryl.  The car was working great in most of the track but the last turn was a handful.  The understeer caught Colin out and he ran wide on to the front straight and put 2 wheels off the track.  The gap was now down to 1 second.

The very next lap Colin set the fastest lap of the race and the gap was now 2 seconds.

Coleman passed O'Young for second at about halfway and Colin had 3 seconds on him.

With 5 laps to go Colin had stretched it to 4 seconds and started to back off as the understeer was getting worse because the tires were on their last legs.

He held the gap to 4 seconds and took the checkered flag to make it a perfect weekend.

2 poles, 2 fastest laps, 2 wins, 2 track records, 2 fast time in warm up.

Colin now has a 29 point lead in the championship with 2 races to go this next weekend in Phoenix.

Here Travis presents the trophy to Colin as Steve Henry had a team member give the awards to each driver this race.  Travis looks as happy as Colin and should be.  He works his butt off and is such a big part of this team that we would fold the whole thing in an instant if it was not for his help.

Travis was asked to give a speech on the podium and kept it simple.  All he said was "please buy my book."