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AMERICAN LE MANS SERIES NEWS - MOSPORT, 24 AUGUST 2008 |
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…as Paul Drayson celebrates another Founders Cup trophy on the overall podium! The American Le Mans Series visited Canada today for round 8 of the series at the super-high speed Mosport circuit. The Ontario venue remains unchanged since it held F1 Grands Prix in the 1970s, and its continuous fast sweeping corners are a daunting challenge for drivers. The Drayson-Barwell Aston Martin Vantage GT2 put on by far its most competitive showing to date, coming home eighth in GT2 after a great performance from the team and drivers Paul Drayson and Jon ny Cocker. However, whilst the end result was our best of the season, it wouldn't be a ‘normal' race week for us without another story of triumph over adversity…. On the Monday and Tuesday of the pre-event week we actually managed our first two test days of the season without any major dramas. This not only gave Paul and Jon ny some useful circuit-learning time, but meant that our engineers were at last able to get through a good amount of car handling set-up work. With some updates from Aston Martin Racing and an improved front tyre from Dunlop, we really started to make some progress with the car. We therefore carried through a good level of optimism into the practice sessions on Friday and Saturday. We approached the official qualifying session on Saturday hopeful of Jon ny being able to plant the car inside the top eight, as we closed the performance gap to the GT2 front-runners to under two seconds. Sadly we never got the chance to make qualifying as another dreaded engine failure hit us in the Saturday afternoon practice session. The crew thus got stuck in to putting the old ‘Road America ' engine back in – the same one they had just taken out on the Wednesday! Sunday's 2hrs 45 min race was thus another nerve-wracking period as we nervously counted down the minutes and laps all the way to the very end. Both Paul and Jon ny put in superb stints behind the wheel, and despite again being disadvantaged by the safety car procedure (through no fault of our own), the improved pace of the car was good enough to move us into eighth place and our second points score of the season.
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