Thursday Mosport Notebook

July 22, 2011
Chris Livengood in the pits.

A day that approached 100*F and felt even more scorching ended with Tim Minor and Chris Livengood pacing the time sheets at Mosport. The stories didn’t stop there as more notes and tidbits emerged from the paddock throughout the course of day one for the F2000 Championship Series in Ontario.

Transponders!

Audette may have been fastest by a slim margin with a working transponder.

The testing and practice games with teams unplugging transponders were put to a stop at Mid-Ohio, when Series officials made transponders mandatory for all official sessions.

For practice one at Mosport, Remy Audette did not log an official time due to a non-working transponder which was traced to an electrical issue. Prior to that practice session, Audette Racing had never before been “one of those teams,” and the issue was valid.

With wiring fixed, Audette bounced back to post the second fastest time in the afternoon session. Many on the pitwall in the morning had Audette clocked on stop watches just below Tim Minor’s quick time.

However, the Series did clarify at the following drivers and team principals meeting that in the future, cars with non-working transponders will be pulled into the pits until the issue can be corrected, which will result in a loss of track time.

Radon Shuffle

McDonough in the Radon

This just in: Matt McDonough will be driving the Radon for Friday’s qualifying and race at Mosport due to the development team and GTP Motorsports needing more time to tune the high-speed setup.

The Radon picked up three seconds between two practice sessions on Thursday, while the team noted Friday will be treated as a test session. It’s hard to forget what happened the last time the 2006 Champion raced in the F2000 Championship Series.

Blake Teeter is expected to drive on Saturday.

Golf Cart Racing

Golf carts on the race track!

By this photo, HP-Tech definitely won the golf cart race. The F2000 Series is paddocked on the outside of turn eight at Mosport this weekend, which makes gridding and getting to the pits somewhat interesting for the teams.

The usual Mosport paddock is full with the American Le Mans Series, forcing some support series to use the support paddock, which means teams actually drive on the race track to the pits.

Gremlins

Audette Racing was busy replacing a release bearing and had split the #21 Van Diemen as the day came to a close.

The gremlins that Alegra Motorsports faced must be gone as well, as both Alegra cars were in the top ten after practice two, with Gustavo Rizzo fifth quick and Angel Benitez just a few hundredths of a second behind in sixth.

Rizzo was fifth fastest for Alegra

Meanwhile, Clawson Racing spent the day chasing an electrical issue in the #27 car driven by Craig Clawson. With the issue finally resolved, Clawson has working data again and said that he used “the day as a confidence builder,” and while he has raced at Mosport multiple times in the F2000 Series before, that he “needs to drive more aggressively,” to move up the time sheets.

Whatever HP-Tech did to Robert La Rocca’s #10 RFR between sessions must have worked. La Rocca said that after the first practice the car was “not even close” as the Veneuzlean rookie was well off the pace at 1:25.628. But just a few hours later, La Rocca was third quick at 1:22.767.

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