To say that we had a great week-end would almost be an understatement. Monza was a blast! The car had its troubles with the brakes, but performed very well thanks to our pit crews relentless efforts and ingenuity.
We qualified with a 2:16 lap in 32nd position of a 36 car field with 21 prototypes and 15 GTs. Qualifying could have been better, but we had our troubles with craking brake discs, cooking brake pads, front spoiler configuration and front end set-up. You need to understand that on each lap, the car goes to 160-170 mph three times and has to be slowed down to 40-80, depending on which chicane you are at, three times as well. So every 45 seconds, the brakes take a terrible beating! After sorting most of that out, we went into the race with two objectives: finish the race and finish in the top ten of our GT class. Team Perspective, a Le Mans Series GT2 outfit, gave us access to their pits, as well as great advices throughout the week-end.
What a race it was! On the main straightaway, the Charger could outrun a good load of Prototypes and stay with most V8 Lolas easily. Only Jean-Marc Luco's 908 Porsche and Stefano Rosina's T70 Mk III were noticeably faster. In order to baby the brakes, I had to drive as fluidly as I could, which hurt lap times a bit, but was the way to get to the checkerd flag. Once I got in a good groove, I was able to upshift into 4th in Curva Grande and nail it, exiting that turn at 150 mph! What a blast to pass a 911 RSR on the inside while doing that! On the penultimate lap, I passed another 911 on the inside at Ascari and on the final lap a third 911 coming out of the Curva Parabolica. This got us from 10th in GT on the starting grid to 7th in class and 19th overall! Yeeeehaaah!
As at Le Mans Classic, the interest of the fans for the Charger was tremendous. More is to come, so stay online!
