Houston, We Have a Problem!
A Bumpy Road in Texas

2006.05.29: The street course at Houston is bumpy, very bumpy. Unfortunately for AIM Autosport's Star Mazda Team, the bumps didn't stop when the racing finished. After finishing second at the season opener in Sebring, Daniel Herrington finished second in Houston. A penalty assessed to the winner handed the win to Daniel who was subsequently disqualified on technical grounds. That disqualification was overturned on May 25 giving the win back to Daniel. It wasn't a glorious way to take his first victory in a new series, but Daniel was now officially a Star Mazda race winner. Jay Poscente had a good event, performing well throughout the event and taking second in the Masters Class. Rob Bunker, however, couldn't leave Houston fast enough as little went his way.

Practice
Last year, AIM attended a Star Mazda exhibition race at Trois Rivieres to get some experience with the Star Mazda car on a street course. That, unfortunately, did not prepare the team for the bumpiest street course they had ever seen. The Houston organizers did a great job promoting the event and the course layout was interesting and challenging, but the track surface - mostly a cement parking lot - was very bumpy and provided little grip.

Further adding to the challenge was a chicane on the front straight. AIM Autosport's Formula Mazda Team Manager, Ian Willis, said the chicane resembled the Portland festival curves, but much tighter. He also said it was the biggest headache for series, teams and drivers alike.

Street courses are notorious for cautions and stoppages constantly interrupting the action. Star Mazda introduced some new rules to help alleviate this at Houston, but while some ideas worked well, there were some kinks to be worked out. To reduce over-enthusiastic driving in the qualifying session, times from practice sessions would also count for grid position. This seemed reasonable until it became apparent that drivers could cut the chicane, shaving nearly a second off a lap, and would often not be caught as there were not enough officials and marshals to catch all transgressions. This led to some heated discussion over the “correct” order of the practice times.

The biggest deterrent to try to reduce the number of red and yellow flags was issued in the drivers' meeting when a draconian penalty system was announced. Anyone causing a red flag in practice would loose half the next session. Causing a red flag in qualifying would result in the loss of all times, and causing a full-course yellow in the race would see a driver excluded from the next event. These penalties did little to reduce incidents, but greatly increased the frustration level for drivers, teams and officials.

Qualifying
One of the myriad options to weigh when setting up a car for a track is gear ratios. We have two sets of gears for the Mazdas, "short" gears for slower tracks and "tall" gears for longer, faster tracks. Both have the same first gear, but second through sixth are different. Sometimes the tall set works better on slow tracks because second and third gears are better suited to the corners. In such cases we never use sixth gear.

Typically, we approach new tracks by trying both gear sets to see which works best. At Houston, we swapped back and forth a couple of times, but eventually settled on the tall set for qualifying. This turned out to be a mistake as it took most of the session to get up to speed, but Daniel and Rob were able to set good times on their last laps, qualifying 3rd and 14th respectively. Jay was unable to improve on his practice time and was scored 20th - first in the Masters Class. With just 90 minutes between qualifying and the race, the crew did a great job to put the short gears back in all three cars.

The Race
Despite the penalties, the race was full of incidents and full-course cautions. The chicane, while slowing down the cars, was the site of many incidents. Fortunately, none were serious and, hopefully, that aspect of the track can be changed next year. Perhaps they could also get a surface profiler to take out some of the moguls!

Daniel got a good start and moved up to second place. He grabbed the lead from Ryan Justice after a mid-race restart, then the yellows came out again. Under the yellow flags, Justice re-passed Daniel, thinking the lead still belonged to him. Daniel radioed in that he was passed under yellow and we discussed it with the officials. The ruling from race control was that they thought Daniel had passed under yellow before reaching a green flag station and was giving the position back. We disagreed and were told it would be investigated later.

Rob's race was one of frustration and bad luck. Having been shoved around a bit on the first lap and losing a couple of positions, he locked up and spun at the chicane on the second lap in order to avoid hitting another car (and to avoid a severe penalty if contact had occurred). This put him dead last and trying to catch the field. The full-course cautions allowed him to catch the pack and then begin to work his way through the back markers during the short green-flag runs.

Jay enjoyed an excellent race (when it was green) with one exception: the grid marshals had an early version of the grid sheet which did not show him in the correct position and he started the race four spots back from where he should have been. This ultimately affected the Masters Class result as Jay ended up second, behind a competitor he should have started ahead of. He finished 16th overall, second in class.

Rob, despite passing 14 cars to recover to 20th, was not happy with how his race had gone and was glad to be done with this event. Daniel finished second on the road, but we were still to look at the tapes with the stewards after the podium presentation.

Post Race
Upon reviewing the tapes and discussing the yellow flag pass with Daniel, the stewards ruled that Justice had passed under yellow and would be penalized one position. This promoted Daniel to race winner. Certainly, both Daniel and Ryan would have preferred to have fought for the win on the track and not in a meeting with officials, however, Daniel was now a Star Mazda winner... we thought.

Before our car was released from post-race inspection we were informed that we were being disqualified for a non-compliant part. The piece in question was a bracket, a non performance part that held the bodywork on the right-rear floor of the car. This part had been on the car since we purchased it in 2004 and had been through technical inspections many times last year. The original cars, built in 2004 , included a bracket attached to the exhaust which was prone to breaking. Following an accident, the original owner of the car had installed a new exhaust which did not come with the appropriate attachments so a new bracket, approved by the series, was used.

We disagreed with this ruling, but with no IMSA officials present at the time, we could not appeal so, for now, we were disqualified.

The following week at the Mid-Ohio event, our appeal was heard and the win was reinstated. Not only did this clear the cloud over us, it put Daniel in the lead of the Drivers' Championship and AIM Autosport on top of the Team Championship.

Afterthoughts
Daniel Herrington: Daniel turned in another super performance, bolstering his second-place run at Sebring. One of the quickest drivers all weekend. Away from the track, Daniel paid a visit to Texas Children’s Hospital with Racing for Kids and appeared on the largest country music station in Houston.
Jay Poscente: Overall it was an excellent event for Jay. The only glitch being the mix up on the grid. He was the fastest Masters Class driver all weekend.
Rob Bunker: Not much went well for Rob. He put in the effort, never gave up and made a lot of passes on very difficult street course, but he went home disappointed with the result.

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