TUDOR United SportsCar Series Watkins Glen - Short Version

**Schen** · 06-30-2015

(Expect me to do a complete write up later on, I'll let you know when that happens but in the mean time here's the short Viper related version of the weekend long adventure to Watkins Glen. Enjoy! )

So the weekend all started Thursday afternoon when Bobby Cerchione, his kids and I traveled up towards the Glen with an RV and the Magnum loaded up with all sorts of stuff. We stopped overnight at a Flying J rest stop and then made the rest of the trek to the track the following Friday morning. Friday turned out to be the only beautiful day of the entire weekend. There we met up with Kurt. We saw Kuno Wittmer in the paddock, driving the #007 TRG Aston Martin and Jonathan Bomarito as well, driving the #7 Mazda Prototype. Al Deane, from TI Automotive brought Bobby's kids some hats and gave me a die cast of the 24 hour of Daytona winning car. That little thing is awesome, might have it signed at Lime Rock!

We split up for a little bit, Kurt and I headed back to the paddock for some more photos and then Al grabbed us and before you know it we were on a golf cart headed towards pit lane! So we got to spend then entire hour of practice from the Viper stall! Tire changes were made, mock pit stops and driver changes occurred. It was really cool to see it all from that perspective. We noticed the Vipers weren't very strong in dry weather conditions. Decent but things got better.

Things were NOT so much better weather wise from that point on. Rain was in for the entire weekend, causing havoc in Porsche Cup and losing the 2nd race for them. Lamborghini Super Trofeo didn't have much luck either and then IMSA decided to cancel second practice. Saturday was a tiny bit better. The Prototype lites went on no problem except for one red flag I believe, forcing the clean up crew to head up the esses hoping to dry the track as best as they could. Eventually the Tudor series hit the track for final practice before qualifying. It's wet, very wet. So a lot of teams switch the wet weather tires and then the Vipers really started taking off! Kinda weird right? But man those cars looked seriously good. There was a light of hope at the end of the tunnel that maybe rain wasn't a bad thing.

Then they canceled qualifying and we watched The Transporter, Ferris Buhler's Day Off and the Three Stooges in the RV. Bummer. That forced the field to be set by points, leaving our two heroes in the last two positions but tomorrow was another day, race day, and we just had to keep the faith that things would turn out.

On race day the rain seemed to taper off a little bit but the track was pretty wet and so we did the grid walk. Handshakes were made. Ben, Marc, Al Carter, Cam, and Jeroen all seemed to be in pretty good spirits. We headed into the front straight grandstands for the start and right off the bat the Vipers quickly made up positions. The weather was on our side! From 11th to 6th to 4th, then finally 1st for a while. The cars ran strong and it was looking really good. Then we heard that the #33 ran off the track in turn 10 and went a lap down. But the #93 was on point and when Goose hopped in it really took off! A little over a thousand clicks of my camera later and a walk around the track with Bryan, we headed to the RV for lunch and so I could dump the photos on the computer.

With an hour left in the race, the cars were parked and then the yellow came out but Viper was still first in class. We all headed out to victory lane. While waiting there the worse case scenario became a reality, the green flag came back out with a whole twenty minutes left. Have I mentioned that this was my first IMSA race ever? Seriously. My knuckles were probably just as white as Marc's were inside the #93. Hoping, praying, a yellow would reappear or at least Viper would get some distance. The #33 also got it's lap back. Then the most unfortunate thing happened! As Kuno was pitting the #007, the car just flew and hit the inner wall. We could see the car briefly and hear the impact from victory lane and then the yellow came out of the remaining five minutes of the race! My first IMSA race just became a Viper GTD win and I was waiting for the car! Talk about excitement! The guys gave us victory lane hats (I got Marc's Tudor hat!) and everyone took photos with the winning car. Al Deane, Marc, myself, Bobby and the kids all crammed onto the cart back to the haulers and Kurt drank some champagne out of the big bottle! It was awesome!

We all said our goodbyes but feeling a level of pride like no other leaving that track. Despite all the rain, it was the perfect weekend of racing capped off by a victory for the #93 Viper Exchange/TI Automotive GT3-R! Let's do it again at the Rock!

--RS