Practice sessions were uneventful, with both Tom Papadopoulos (#43) and Johnny Mowlem (#44) continually lapping in the top half of the 34 car field. Qualifying again turned into a real battle for supremacy amongst the championship contenders and our hope of putting both cars in the top half of the grid was not to be, with Johnny Mowlem taking his Aston Martin DBRS9 (#44) to thirteenth on the grid with 3.2 seconds covering the first 15 places. Johnny was one of the drivers who broke the existing track record. Tom Papadopoulos, fighting oversteer for the whole of qualifying, placed his DBRS9 20th on the grid. Immediately after qualifying both cars underwent the scrutiny of their mechanics, Johnny’s crew working on a snapped gear selector and Tom’s working on suspension and damper settings to try and get rid of the oversteer.

Race day dawned bright and sunny and by race time (2:00pm Pacific Coast Time) the temperature was up in the high seventies. At the start Johnny moved away well only to experience gear selector problems yet again and was unable to get the car out of third gear so he pulled into the pits where he sat for two laps while the problem was sorted out. Once fixed, he stormed away and finished in a creditable twenty-second, two laps down. To make matters worse, Tom’s car was losing clutch fluid on the warm up lap and when the lights went out, he pulled away very slowly. Once under way he gained several places before spinning into the gravel trap in turn three, 12 minutes into the race.

The last race of the year will not be remembered fondly. However, this was our first season with these cars and we have learned a lot. The first race of next season will be at Sebring in March and we will be doing substantial testing during the off season.