It was so frustrating how I lifted early, braked early and still couldn't get it stopped. It was a case of the tires not being clean – they'd just picked up too much rubber during the caution period, and I needed to drive about one percent slower. But there's no point in coming up with excuses like “the tires were dirty” because a) who's fault is that, and b) I was the only one who spun! The difficulty of the track at that moment was such that I thought I could perhaps pressure Will into making a mistake, but instead it was me who went over the limit. We clawed back up a bit in the closing laps, but obviously it was an anti-climax to a weekend where the Z-Line Designs car had looked strong enough to win.
At Edmonton, we never had such high hopes after the first practice sessions on Friday. Penske and Ganassi seemed to have it all under control, and we just didn't have a good balance. It took a long time for us to find what the car was looking for at that track. Eventually we found a couple of things that gave it a little bit of speed for qualifying, improved it in the warm-up and slightly better again for the race. But it was never as good as we'd hoped pre-weekend. On blacks I was able to keep up with Ryan Hunter-Reay on reds, although he was getting held up by EJ Viso at the time. But we pitted at the same time and I hoped that on reds I could put him under pressure and maybe sneak by…
Ultimately, we had a suspension problem that required a mid-race change of damper. Unfortunately, the new damper that got fitted was a different type altogether from the other three and was much too hard. Initially it felt fine, but when the tires came up to temperature, I had another alarming moment at Turn 9 so pitted again, because we were already two laps down by this stage and Edmonton is not the place to have an accident. One of the mechanics jumped out, and softened up the new damper to get it close to matching the other three, and then we went out and were able to set fourth- or fifth-fastest lap of the race on prime tires. I was quite proud of that!
Mid-Ohio was more frustrating, to be honest, because it was interference from outside that screwed us. OK, we weren't fast on Friday – certainly not compared to our very good test there beforehand – but actually the car's main problem was the rubber laid down by the ALMS cars which knocked our setup out of contention. So we chased it and we got there in time for qualifying. I'm confident we'd have been in the Firestone Fast Six if Ryan Briscoe hadn't sent me off the track on my final run. We'd made a good change before that run: I needed to find 0.25 compared to my previous best, but we only had time for four laps because the change had taken a little longer than we wanted. As you know, in qualifying the timing line isn't the start/finish line; at Mid-Ohio it's before Turn 11. On this crucial lap, through 11, 12, 1 and 2, I was already up 0.2sec, so I thought, “OK, I need just 0.05sec from the next six corners and I'll be in the Fast Six.”
On the negative side, I'd seen Ryan pull out of the pits, which is odd considering we were coming up to the checkered flag: he wasn't going to get a timed lap in. I caught him pretty quick down the straight, pulled over just to show myself in his mirrors. As we went into Turn 4, I had a face full of his rear wing, and as we got on the power out of the turn, he kept to the right. I thought, “Great, he's letting me go – although it would have been better before the corner, but at least I'm clear now.” But he told me afterward that he didn't realize I was there and he was just going wide to set up for the next corner. I went up the inside into Turn 5, turned in and suddenly I felt hard contact. I was bemused and couldn't work it out. I could also feel that I'd done something to my thumb. I got hard on the brakes, put my hands on my chest and hit the wall. Then I tried to work out how on earth that happened.
Ryan came over later to apologize after he'd had a chance to watch the replay. He said he thought he was going to make the timing line before the checker and didn't realize that wasn't possible. On the grid he also apologized to my crew, which meant a lot. Whatever, it meant we were starting artificially far back, in 11th, and at a track that's pretty tough to pass on. So come race day, we started on primes and passed Marco Andretti to take 10th on lap 1. After a while, it became pretty clear I was getting held up by Viso who was on reds, which at the time I found amusing as I was also effectively driving with one hand.
Then he started to make little mistakes which slowed me up even more. I was hoping he'd eventually make a bigger mistake so I could get through, or he'd stop driving by his mirrors and just get his head down and allow us to start catching back up to the pack ahead. But his pace started to get worse and worse, so I decided I'd have to pass him.
When I saw him run wide at Turn 2, I thought, “OK, time to go.” I drafted him down the straight, pulled out, got three-quarters of the way down the inside of him before we got on the brakes. We both braked pretty late, but already I could see him coming across, aiming straight for the apex. So I kept on the brakes all the way in, went on the inside curb, and still I wasn't getting the room I needed to avoid contact.
There are two points I want to make here. One is that, OK, EJ won the braking contest, and we were at a right and then a left sequence. If he'd given me a little more room at the right-hander, he'd still have been on the inside for the next corner and would have won the battle – for that lap at least – and we'd both have been able to fight on. But he chose to not even give me the room to hand the corner back to him!
The second point, is the difference between seeing the incident in a simplistic way and actually watching and understanding the sequence. Afterward, there were some strange comments from people who I thought understood racing and who just looked at the fact that our points of contact were EJ's right-rear wheel and my left front and they decided that therefore I wasn't far enough alongside him. Well, I certainly was when we went into the braking zone! The reason I then lost ground to him was because that's as much as I could do to back out of the maneuver once EJ decided to drive like I wasn't there.
So, on reflection, I actually wish I'd not backed out of it as far as I did! I'm not saying we wouldn't have rubbed wheels, but if I'd hung back just enough to hit his sidepod with my left front and barged him out of the way, it would have been a more square-on hit that wouldn't have flattened my left-front suspension. But with a right hand that's just resting on top of the steering wheel, the last thing I wanted was to have any kind of contact at all…
Even now as I'm writing this a few days later, I wonder if I should have just leaned on him and tried to complete the pass. Sure, we might still both be out of the race, but at least there wouldn't be people looking at this snapshot of the moment of contact and then passing judgment that I just ran into the right rear of Viso's car like some kind of overambitious amateur. It's very annoying.
“Annoying” doesn't begin to describe how everyone on the Dreyer & Reinbold Racing team feels right now. Four races that we thought would be our bread-and-butter and would see us at the very least getting on the podium a couple of times and fighting for a win have now passed us by without even a top-five finish. There's a twisted way of looking at it positively, I suppose – that we have enough potential to have our goals set so high. But when you can't follow that through with results, that means the frustration is multiplied for us all. The important thing for us now, though, is to use that frustration to fire ourselves up even more and come home with the goods at Sonoma next weekend.
One good thing to report is about my latest teammate. (With one of my thumbs out of action, I'm not sure I can still count how many teammates I've had this year.) J.R. Hildebrand is an easy guy to work with, I believe he has a lot of potential and I quickly came to trust his judgment. We could divide the workload in testing and practice and therefore make faster progress, because I discovered I could rely on his feedback. That's impressive for a rookie; it shows he isn't at all out of his depth in the big cars and can still think while driving at the limit. As Indy Lights champ, he deserved a full-time ride this year and all credit to D&R for giving him his break. After Mid-Ohio and Sonoma next weekend, hopefully he'll have shown every team that he deserves a full-time ride in 2011, too.
For myself, Sonoma is my last realistic shot at victory this year because I still think that Ganassi and Penske will have the edge at the four ovals that round out the season. Dreyer & Reinbold got on the podium at Sonoma last year with Mike Conway, and although it may take a little luck to reach the top step this year, I think we deserve that luck. This team continues to work hard and hopefully we've shaken off the bad luck that has dogged us since Texas. Our pace should have put us higher than ninth in the championship and it's time we turned that pace and potential into a hard result, the sort we achieved in St. Pete and Long Beach.
Justin