LALLY: Lime Rock Park Debrief

Hello everyone, thanks for reading my final column for 2013.

Unfortunately, it’s not quite the column I wanted to write.

It’s tough to put in to words the Lime Rock weekend. Coming in to the track, the team had really earned their right to go for the championship.

Porsches have struggled all season, and the reason we came in as the point leaders was simply due to perfection by everyone all season.

Great strategy, perfect pit stops, awesome driving by John, all played their respective roles.

The fact that it was over before the second lap… well f$&!.

However, in many ways it still was an amazing weekend. We were never really sure of how our car stacked up against everyone, but we had a good game-plan and I think we had a car that would have been good on the long run.

When the green flag fell, John did exactly what he was supposed to do.

Lime Rock is notoriously crazy, and there have been a number of times on the first lap when the race has gone to crap. If you watch John’s video, you’ll see just how careful he was during the opening lap, he did everything he could to stay out of trouble.

Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do when he got in the second lap incident. I’ll stay out of saying anything too negative, but it was an unfortunate incident.

Here’s what I will say. We’re lucky that the incident happened so early, because it proved what Magnus Racing is made of.

When the car came in to the garage, we should have been done. Many teams probably would have called it quits. But everyone knew their part.

The guys instantly went to work to get the car running again… changing radiators, changing bodywork, replacing everything they could. Even our support staff was doing their part, running to race control to make sure everything was legal to return on track, bringing the guys water, etc.

It was nothing short of heroic to get back on track, and because of the points we scored from returning to the race, John and I were able to collect second place in the championship.

It’s been such an honor to work with these guys. Everyone on the team puts their heart and soul in to the program. My engineer Lars, crew chief John Bedell, all of the guys: Tucker, Patrick, Abel, Rob, Kyle, Thad, Dan, and Wayne, and all of our fantastic hospitality staff: Lorie, Jessica, Hutch and Taylor.

No one here just shows up and goes to work… they show up and put everything they can in to it. It’s been a great honor to run in 2013, and I’m glad I could do my part.