Mowlem's musings

The whole of the ACEMCO team worked liked Trojans throughout the entire race week. Terry Borcheller, David Brabham and I might have ended up on the podium, but as drivers we became almost immaterial in the end. Normally when you end up third in a race, you don't see the mechanics and engineers except at the pit stops, and as long as they go smoothly, it's the drivers who are the visible part of the whole team. This one was different...

The Sebring 12 hours is always a great event with a terrific atmosphere, and it also nice to go somewhere where the sun is shining and you can wear shorts in early March! The night before the race the team were supposed to leave the track by 6pm, but because of a few 'car issues' that needed sorting, they ended up leaving 11 and a half hours later, at 5.30am - only five hours before the race was due to start! If ever a podium was earned by the team, not by the drivers, this was it - and we hadn't got to the start yet...

Raceday itself was a little cooler, which is always welcome when you going to be thrown around for hours at a time in a hot cockpit. Terry had had a problem in qualifying, which meant he'd started from the back, alongside Ollie Gavin in the factory Corvette, but they had both soon carved their way through the field, to put us in a solid third place in GTS.

I took over from Brabs but, during the end of his stint, he had started to lose water pressure. The team had been monitoring this very carefully with their real time telemetry and after just a couple of laps I was told to bring the car back in due to rising water temperatures. The team robbed part of the cooling system from the spare car, and we dropped from second place (Ollie had dropped out in the #4 Corvette) to fifth. Very cleverly, they took the decision to weld up the part they'd taken off the car, just in case it was needed....

Later in the race, we had the same thing happen, and thanks to the foresight of the team, we had a replacement part. Parts like that just don't fail - never mind twice!

The team worked a minor miracle to keep the car going and by my final stint we were just cruising and looking after the car. It was nice to see the fireworks ending the race for the second year on the trot, and this year I was driving slow enough that I could actually take a good look at them!

We're actually taking a lot of encouragement from what happened. After all, we have now hopefully got all our bad luck out of the way in one go. Also the fact that we had problems at Sebring with several areas of the car - at one meeting, all in one go, rather than spreading them out over the first few races, means we know have plenty of time to put them right before Mid-Ohio - and the fact that it was a 12-hour race, and that we came away with points for third place.

Jeff Giangrande, the team owner, now has a job list for the team as long as your arm. They will get through that in time for us to go testing in May. We've got tests lined up at Portland, Mosport, Sears Point and Laguna Seca. So by Mid-Ohio there will be a big step forward in speed as well as reliability.

All in all, despite it being a baptism of fire, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. It was good to finally drive this Saleen in race conditions and I also really enjoyed the company of the whole team. They are a great bunch of guys and I can see that we are going to have a lot of fun this year, both on and off the track.

My team-mates were pretty good too! We all got on really well together and it was great how we all pushed each other along but still helped one another wherever necessary. However, Brabs and Terry did spend rather a lot of time discussing the spiritual direction of the human race as opposed to discussing car set-up...

The ALMS GTS class looks to be a big area of growth over the coming months, which is very encouraging. Obviously the ALMS already has Corvette and Jeff's commitment, and now Dick Barbour is coming in also with two Lamborghinis. There's also the prospect of two other manufacturers coming in before the end of the year -and let's face it, if you want to take on the best, the ALMS is the place to do it.