Although the
circuit on the Burke Lakefront Airport in Cleveland looks fairly
simple and straightforward in a diagram, in reality it is much
different.
Fast, very bumpy and almost featureless it is difficult to
learn-there are almost no reference points for braking and turning
in.
So it is imperative that a rookie driver such as Max Wilson get a
lot of track time during the allotted practice sessions. And he did
just that in preparation for this weekend's Marconi Grand Prix
presented by Firstar.
When the three practice sessions were over Max had run 112 laps
in his winnerB2B Arciero Blair Racing Ford Cosworth Lola, 12 more
laps than distance for Sunday's race.
After the first session on Friday morning his time of 60.076
seconds was just 1.006s. slower than the fastest time of the
session, a notable achievement.
Conditions in that session were also the most difficult of the
weekend. With temperatures in the low 90s and humidity over 80% the
demands on the car, driver and crew were high.
Max and his crew made progress throughout the three sessions and
Max went quicker each session. When qualifying began on Saturday
afternoon he and his crew were ready to show that their strong
performance in the race in Portland the previous weekend-a fourth
place finish-was just an indicator of things to come.
"We were struggling a little bit during practice, especially
since neither I or the team have never been here before," said
the young Brazilian, "so we were playing around with the car a
lot during practices. After this morning's session (Saturday) I sat
with my engineer and talked about a good set up for the car for
qualifying."
RACE
REPORT
