EVENT: A foggy ALMS Mosport 2009

ALMS quite literally roared into Mosport this past weekend and having missed the past two years because of my stupid birthday landing on this weekend I was determined to go this time. Forsaking family and the girlfriend and donned my rain gear and went with a good friend who knows the track decently with the hopes of snapping some good moments. The weather was, as with CSCS, diverse…

Practice in the morning for the ALMS cars was interesting to say the least, the drivers started off under overcast skies and ended up inside the overcast sky!

We managed to find some sweet shooting spots though that let us peer through the mist and get decent angles on the cars. Luckily I had the bazooka lens otherwise every shot would’ve come out even more faded grey than this. The cars were definitely not pushing it hard on the wet track in practice – nobody wanted to stuff it into a wall, but ever so often you’d hear the Corvettes blast up a straight and get people talking.

Now competing in GT2 class the C6R vette’s looked and sounded simply amazing. Nothing else on the track bar perhaps the Panoz had the brutality of these cars. I can see why the NASCAR crowds came out in force…

Another brutal sounding car was the RISI Ferrari F430. Every single corner this thing went into backfiring the whole way through, it was quite something to see and hear. No flames mind you that I saw.

The BMW M3′s were running well and seemed to be doing consistent times. These cars are beyond wide, they remind me really of a DTM style car. I was hoping someone in the paddock would have a regular M3 parked nearby for comparison sake but no such luck.

As practice wrapped up the fog began to slowly lift and the supporting series began racing. I had little interest in them though – only so many formula cars you can watch when you’re anticipating the big boys getting back out on the track.

We definitely weren’t the only ones killing time until the big cars showed up again.

There’s street slammed. Then there’s race car slammed. Then there’s LMP slammed. These things scrape at every corner, and with the suspension travel of a radioflyer you know the forces being exerted on these cars in cornering to make a corner scrape like this must be staggering. These cars generate 3-4G at full clip in a turn. If you’ve never seen a car go into turn 2 at Mosport without lifting off the throttle, it’s a truly awe inspiring sight I found.

As we waited for the next session we decided to stroll the pits and see what spying we could do and how close we could get. Disappointingly the teams wouldn’t let us get under the cars or sit in them, but no problem getting up close with the bazooka lens!

Here’s a shot of the Kumho Tires LMP car engine bay. Note the carbon fiber head cover and liberal use of gold as a heat reflectant.

Listening to conversations with the Mazda head honchos we learned a few items about cost realities for the teams. Such as the $100,000+ steering wheel used in the Mazda LMP cars. No, that’s not a typo, and if you know anything about F1 cars you’ll know 100 large for a steering wheel isn’t an exaggeration.

The Robertson Racing Ford GT was as badass as racecars come. FordGT? That’s not wide. THIS is wide…

So many wheels and tires lying around. If only we Subarus could run a centre bolt conversion! When I asked if there was a kit or anything available I was just laughed at by Duane from CanJam. Wishful thinking but nothing ventured nothing gained.

AP Racing takes care of braking duties on the Lola chassis Mazda cars…

Panoz was represented too, here’s their one entry in GT2. I miss the Panoz LMP cars myself, those were always interesting to watch and they ran hard back in the day. Anybody else remember those grey cars? They were my go-to car in SportscarGT on the PC!

All of the cars were towed around the paddock when they were going for inspection or heading to the pits, which I guess is because they don’t have the smoothest of idles… Or something.

After some greasy food and a some more supporting series running it was time to get the ALMS cars out and qualify! The Mazdas were running hard from the get-go and scraping everywhere too…

Both Flying Lizard porsches were out doing well. I’m fascinated by the LED clusters the Porsches are running, some have 4, some have 8, some have 16 LED clusteres. Seems like a trend with these guys!

I thought the livery on the BMW M3 cars was a bit odd. Is it just me or if you squint a bit does it not look like these cars have had some serious tire rubbing up the side? I know Germans love Helvetica and whatnot but the designer in me knows there’s some typography work that needs to be done here…

The Ford GT was a fairly low key entry I thought, they didn’t seem to stand out watching them race like a few other cars. They were definitely fast but they never seemed to look like they were riding the edge of the car’s potential into a turn. Perhaps that’s a testament to the smoothness of the driver though more than anything else.

Here’s me trying by best to get a look inside the cockpit of a LMP1 car as it goes by… must be somewhat distracting with all those lights blinking at you at 183mph.

With the ALMS qualifying over the GT3 Cup Porsches came out and raced a solid race. The lead cars were turning in around 1:24′s so it wasn’t as electrifying as watching the LMP cars even qualifying but still a good race!