9-7-2003 - Fran Am 1600 race - Thunderhill CA

Saturday 9-6-2003 - After a good practice day Friday things got official.  Saturday morning we tried some changes to the car and with the cool air all the cars were faster than on Friday.

The car was close but needed just a little more front grip.

We made a few very small changes and in the afternoon it was fast.

Colin was able to take advantage of the car changes and ended up 2nd fastest behind Brad Coleman.

By this time we had over 350 miles on the tires, but we wanted to work on the race set up and knew if we could make the car fast on old tires, new tires would be very quick.

For the last session we made a change to the camber looking for front grip.

It worked and Colin was fast right from the start.

We came in for a small tire pressure change and Colin was quicker on the out lap.

Max, Colin's team mate from Belgium, had fitted new tires and ripped off a quick lap early.

Colin was about to come to the pits for a second change when the session was ended early.

Officials found parts and TOOLS on the track and had to stop the session to clean it up. 

So Max was 1st with Colin 2nd for a Speed Secrets top 2! 

Here is Max on the track today.  He had some car problems early on and than got them sorted out and was quick.

The new tires helped and things were looking good, but when a car spun in front of him he had to go off track. 

A trip to the pits showed a broken skid plate and a damaged under wing.

The Speed Secrets guys (Gord Bentley and Justin Pruskowski), have the car fixed for Sunday.

Sunday 9-7-2003

Here is Colin in the warm up going over the famous Thunderhill "bypass" jump with the 2 inside tires off the ground.

We tried a different set up for the warm up.  It was an attempt to add total grip.

It worked and Colin was quickest in the session.  This was on tires with 450 miles on them.

We fitted new tires for qualifying and on lap 1 Colin was 1 full second faster than the warm up time.  It took 1/2 the session for anyone to get within 1 second of Colin.  By that time we had pitted to make a tire pressure change.  As Colin left the pits there was a full track black flag.  Max got the flag and pitted, but than they displayed the green flag.  Colin stayed out and looked for a gap.  He had one lap left when Max took pole with a 1:49.67 lap time.  The checkered was out and Colin was on his last lap.  It was good enough for the pole with a 1:49.44.  So Speed Secrets were 1-2 in qualifying.

Here is the pace lap with Colin first, Max 2nd and John Knudsen in 3rd.

After qualifying we found that the catalytic converter section of the exhaust was broken.

There was no replacement in the parts truck and we were thinking that we would have to run the broken one.

This would restrict the exhaust flow and cut power from the engine.

Well John Knudsen was good enough to take the converter off his spare car and let us use it.

We have to thank John so much for this.  What a great competitor.

On the start Colin got the jump on Max and as they entered turn one Max slotted in behind Colin as they had planned. 

Max was very nice in agreeing not to race Colin for the first turn and this made the start clean.

Daryl O Young took 3rd as John Knudsen's engine developed a problem and had no power.

Garrett Zine was 4th into turn 1.

This is how it looked on lap 1.  Max right on Colin.

Colin was able to pull out about .2 seconds per lap for the first 10 laps getting a 2 second gap.

Daryl O Young was pressuring Max for 2nd by now.

He got a good run off the last turn and went by Max into turn 1.

Max than pressured Daryl and Daryl went off track putting Max back to 2nd.  That gave Colin a 5 second gap and he held it to the end taking the checkered flag first.

Max had a great run to second, completing the Speed Secrets sweep.

Here max and Colin are close in the early stages of the race.

The podium Had Colin in the center with Max on his right and Garrett Zine in 3rd.

This makes Colin's 3rd victory this year with no other driver having more than 1.

It also moves him to the points lead in the rookie of the year standings.

He has missed 2 races this year and will score no points for them so being 3rd in the points championship is pretty amazing.

Here is Steve Henry the series race director and all around runner of things.

He puts on a great series and uses common sense in making rules and decisions.

I am sure there will come a point when we disagree with Steve...............................well that point has already come, but he has always been fair and even handed. 

A hard thing to find in racing today - Thanks Steve.

In fact Patty, Fred, and the entire staff of the series gets a thanks for all their work.

It is a real pleasure to run here.

Here is the Speed Secrets crew.

Left to right:  Olivier (Max's engineer), Gord (Max's crew chief), Travis, Justin (Speed Secrets partner), Jeff, Dominic (Max's Dad),  Max and Colin kneeling.

So ends the exchange program on a good note.

Thanks to Speed Secrets for making it happen, and to Dominic, Max, and all at TBR for working so hard in France.

Gord Bentley and Justin Pruskowski did a fantastic job for Max and helping us this weekend.

Colin's next race is the end of September in Phoenix.

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