Rubber Pick-Up Plagues the #2 Gentleman Jack at Laguna Seca

The Verizon Festival of Speed marked the return of the Childress-Howard Motorpsorts team and the debut for #2 Gentleman Jack Pontiac Crawford DP08 to the Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in Salinas, CA. The team was plagued from the start with tire pick-up that seemed impossible to shake.

While one driver, Rob Finlay, was being awarded an honorary Doctor of Business from his alma mater, Southern New Hampshire University, the other driver, Andy Wallace, was sliding all over the track trying to make sense of a car that felt like the rear end was skating on ice.

Crew Chief, Catherine Wallace said "you name it we tried it, and never managed to make a dent. I have never seen anything like it. It was as if we were retreading the tires.  It actually raised the ride height of the car it was so thick."

Max Crawford commented that “our chassis (the Crawford) has always been kind to its tires, always coming on at the end of a stint when others are fading away, but at low grip tracks this hurts us even more and at Laguna in particular it gave us an immense pick-up problem. We could not clean the pick-up off and as any driver knows this makes the car almost un-drivable."

Rob Finlay started the race having flown in Saturday evening after the SNHU commencement ceremony, only driving the car in the morning warm-up and on the recon and pace laps before he was thrown in at the deep end. The team’s decision to waive qualifying required Rob, as the starting driver, to start the race at the rear of the grid. Rob quickly gained five positions by lap nine then to seventh position by lap twenty-one. Lap forty saw the #2 Gentleman Jack Pontiac Crawford hit in the right rear by a GT car, bending the upper wishbone mounts, damaging the wheel and throwing the rear suspension out of alignment. This incident affected the handling of the car dramatically and Rob had to slow down which then added to the pick-up problem.

Now in survival mode Rob completed his one hour and forty minute stint handing over the battle scarred car to Andy Wallace. This was one time neither driver wanted to hog the the car.

Andy started his race with one hour to go, a fresh set of rubber, and fueled to the end. The pick-up came on almost immediately and just as he was able to generate some tire temperature and get rid of some of it, a yellow.  The yellow allowed the tires to cool just enough to vacuum up all the rubber they could find. He managed to get the car to the end but not without his share of "moments."

Andy remarked "Rob did a great job as usual, and unfortunately got tagged mid-stint. After this the car was a real handful and I spent my time concentrating on staying on the road which was much more difficult than it sounds. A real shame because Laguna is a great track and we’ve had excellent results here in the past."

We have been away from this series for two years and we are on a steep learning curve with this new tire, said Max Crawford, DP08 chassis constructor. The team and both our drivers did an outstanding job this weekend. To quote my friend, Jan Lammers, we don’t have problems, only challenges! This is a team that will meet this challenge head-on and move forward toward a performance solution for low grip tracks.

The Childress-Howard Motorsports team will now be on a full offensive to generate tire temperature and look past the hurdles of the last two races. Never give up!