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den 10 juni 2003
Texas rocks!
Dear friends,
Texas motor speedway once again provided excellent entertainment for the approximately 92.000 spectators Saturday night.
For us in Team Rahal it was the first race at a high banked track since we were here the last time. That time we sat on the pole but the race was cancelled since drivers got dizzy from the high g-forces. This time it was quite different - we did not sit on the pole and we actually raced!
It was also my first night race since we lost the IRL championship at this very track in 1999. I love night races, it’s a very special feeling very different from a day race. It’s like comparing going to a party in the daytime and in the nighttime.
It was a very tough race trying to hang with the lead pack while racing side by side most of the night.
We were positioned in fourth place at the second to last restart, when I hit the rev limiter during a gear change. That’s all it took and it killed the momentum for a split second and 4 cars got by in a flash. Luckily we managed to get those positions back again.
I would have loved to say that we could have won, well perhaps we could have if things would have gone our way a little bit, but the truth is we did not seem to have the last ounce of speed that we needed. Despite this we finished in fourth place, approximately half a second behind winner Unser Jr. Second was Kanaan and third Tagaki.
Considering it was our first time, without any testing, on a high-banked track I am happy with the result.
The crew played a big part in this result as they performed perfect pit stops all night long and gained us 3 positions in one of the stops.
It also helped us one position in the championship so now we are sitting 4th behind Kanaan, Unser Jr and Castroneves.
The race was quite incident free, only Schecter, Sharp, Giaffone and Foyt IV hit the wall. The only one I witnessed was Sharp and Giaffone. Giaffone thought him and Sharp were going into the corner two wide, when his teammate Tagaki made it three wide.
Since Giaffone was on the outside he came down a little, not knowing there was a third car involved, Tagaki had to choose between lifting off or take his car below the white line on the inside straight leading into turn 3 and try to pull his pass off. He tried the latter. As they approached the corner at 220 mph ( 350 kmh) there was no room left, and with half his car off the track/banking the crash was unavoidable.
It looked like a video game in front of me but somehow we managed to steer clear of the mess and luckily no one got seriously injured. But I am sure Mo Nunn, who’s the team owner of both Tagaki and Giaffone’s cars, had a few words to communicate to his drivers afterwards…
Although we gained a couple of positions these are the situations every driver dreads. All of us knows the risks and have accepted to take them, but I can assure you that the minutes before a race nobody’s unaffected because you simply just don’t know what the race has in store for you.
Sometimes you make a mistake, sometimes something mechanical happens but when we are running wheel to wheel it makes it even worse since you are also exposed to other drivers opportunistic moves. All of which can have disastrous results.
But then you get in the car and it’s business as usual….
Since Indy we have entered into a very busy part of the season. We have just completed the first of 10 races in 12 weeks, plus we are doing testing in between, all over USA.
The championship will be decided for the most part in this period.
Of course this schedule is tough on everybody.
The focus for us right now is to try to keep the momentum going and hopefully continue without any mishaps. As we have seen it the races so far it is tough task because the competition is so close that you got to be on the ragged edge all the time, and then naturally, things do happen from time to time. Knock on wood, so far we’ve been fortunate, but over the years I have learned that that only means we are getting closer and closer to our “turn”. Nevertheless I hope we manage to keep our momentum going, that we manage to continue to improve our performance and that we can win some races. If we manage this I think we have a good shot at the championship.
On the leisure side of things, we also did another gig in Texas with “Kenny Brack & the Subwoofers”.
It was quite a few fans there and we had a lot of fun as usual.
In honor of Texas we played Janis Joplin “Me Bobby McGee”, Stevie Ray Vaughan “The House is Rockin” and “Tush” ZZ top.
The fans liked it and now the next gig is an opening act for “3 Doors Down” in Richmond, Virginia, in the end of the June. But until then we have another race in Pikes Peak and a few tests to conduct.
Pikes Peak is another track we have not tested on but I am familiar with it since I raced there in –98 and –99, and I managed to win the –98 race. The track is flat and wide but it’s a 1mile oval so it will as usual be very tight.
Talk to you soon
KB
kennybrack.com
KB
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