Media Release:

Watkins Glen Update

I am very pleased to have won at the Watkins Glen 6 hour race this weekend. After receiving the phone call last week that KMR would not be racing anymore this year I was very grateful that G&W had a place for me on the team. What more could you ask for than to go and win the race with them. This is the second year in a row for them. I finished 2nd to them last year in another car.

It wasn't without excitement this weekend though. The first day of practice, Thursday was wet so we chose not to go out. G&W has been doing this for a while and knew the car would be close right off the trailer so we didn't want to jeopardize the car in the wet. Friday morning Darren Law went out first, then Matt Drendal, I followed Matt with Darren back in for the end. The plan was to get input, make changes and have Darren drive it with the changes. We did all this making two changes, one at a time for Darren at the end. After I drove we even had time to talk about the car before Darren got in at the end. I couldn't believe how organized they were. We did all that in a one hour session, pretty impressive. The car is good, was the report Darren gave at the end.

Then came the bad times. Darren went out to qualify and it was a little wet. Grand Am ran all the classes at the same time to keep one group from having an advantage with drier conditions than the other. It was a planned 30 minute session. The rain had other plans. The GT BMW was one of the first cars out and got one of the only clean laps by anyone before the deluge came down. To let you know how bad it was, the BMW GT car qualified 3rd OVERALL! Shortly after that a crashed caused a black flag all. We didn't get a full lap, it was out and in. We didn't know it then but that would be our qualifying lap. When the course went green again, a number of cars crashed on the out lap. Unfortunately one of those was Darren. The river that ran across the esses claimed our car as well as others including Larry Schumacher in the Porsche GT1 car. We were done for qualifying as were a lot of others. Grand Am stopped qualifying and the field was in no particular order since a lot of cars never got a complete lap. This would make an interesting start with many of the fast cars in the back. It turned out fine. All of the starting drivers did a great job.

It was a great day for G&W. Darren started and after about 5 laps or so the front sway bar bolts backed out and we didn't have a functioning front bar. We didn't figure out what was causing the oversteer until I turned the car over to Matt Drendal 4 hours into the race. We fixed the bar. Matt did a terrific job leading the race and turning it back over to Darren for the last stint to take the checkered flag for all of us. The team was standing on the pit wall that separated the pits from the track when Darren came by after the finish. I think he came so close he sucked the paint off the wall, not to mention my eyebrows. It was great. The BMW wasn't so lucky as they had radiator problems early in the race, loosing 6 laps putting them out of contention. I felt badly for them but that is why they call it endurance racing, you never know what can and will happen.

The other 2 G&W cars had a great race too. Cort Wagner drove over 4 hours with co-driver Steve Marshall, who was feeling ill to finish 3rd in GTS. Steve felt a little better after that. Michael Schrom and his team finished 4th in GT with a great run. G&W deserve it. They are truly great people that make a great team, led by a very special person - Cole Scrogham. You can see where Cole gets his personality and savvy from when you see his dad. Thank you for having me.


David Murry