From Way Out There...
VIR 400 Preview

By Tommy Brolsma

Circuit map: from Grand Am and from racingcircuits.net.
Track website: http://www.virclub.com/
Entry list:
Schedule of Events
Television coverage: SPEED, October 5 (tape delay), 4:00 - 7:00 PM. (EST)
Weather Forecast: Partly Sunny with a high of 65 degrees. 20% chance or precipitation. (from weather.com)

Talk about the way to wind down the season, go from a driver's favorite track in a Canadian resort town to an old school racecourse turned racing country club in Virginia. Both are some of the most spectacular tracks in North America, and are exclusively stops for Grand Am. We are so lucky!

VIR is an old school layout, which means some quick corners, narrow racetrack, and some incredible scenery. Here's a description from Terry Borcheller from his press release: "This is one of my favorite tracks. I really like the flow of it. It has a lot of different elements; it has some elevation changes, some high-speed rhythm sections, it's a driver's track." He also mentioned "…the Daytona Prototypes have a lot of aerodynamic features that lend themselves to performance at VIR."

The DP's should be great on this track. It's hard to guess who will win, because the Chevy Doran of Bell Motorsports has the horsepower, but the Brumos Porsche FABCAR's are a little more nimble through the corners. The spoiler in all of this is the BMW Picchio, as VIR is G&W's home track, and they have logged lots of test miles there. After missing Mt. Tremblant, Cegwa will be back with their Toyota FABCAR, joining the Doran Lista Toyota Doran and the SpeedSource Ford Focus DP.

This should be a tight battle for 400 km, and may come down to who gets caught behind lapped cars on the tight circuit. I'm sure G&W wants this race badly, as they have the very quick Patrick Huisman joining Darren Law in the Picchio. This is probably their best shot to win to date, and I think they might just do it. If the mechanical gremlins pop up on the Picchio, the rest of the DP's are equally capable of pouncing on the chance for a win.

In GTS there are some strong challengers to the Heritage Mustang this week. Joining them are the ACP Camaro for Mark Shaffer and Owen Trinkler, the Derhaag Motorsports Corvette of Simon Gregg and Kenny Wilden, and the ICY / SL Motorsports Corvette for Steve Lisa, Paul Alderman, and David Rosenblum. Kerry Hitt's won the 2002 AGT championship with the ACP team, and the Derhaag team has won in Trans Am and has connections with Justin Bell, who runs the racing school at VIR. There's tough competition for the GTS win, and I don't have a clue who will win. I'll go the easy way out, Dave Machavern and Tommy Riggins in the Heritage Motorsports Mustang.

Picking through the entry list, here are the main contenders for the GT win:

FoW and Marcus are still in a title fight (although FoW has pulled away a bit), but Schumacher Racing won at Mid-Ohio, and Stevenson Motorsports / Auto Assets finished second in class at Watkins Glen. Who will win? Who knows…I don't have to pick anyone, do I? I'll wait for the fantasy league to start that.

Also running in this class as a bit of an experiment for 2004 is a FoW 360 Ferrari Challenge car. This could raise some interest in the SGS/GT classes for next year, as there are a bunch of those cars in North America.

All in all, this could be yet another exciting weekend for Grand Am!

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