Mowlem's musings

This year I've been pretty busy, driving for the factory-supported Petersen Motorsports team in a 911 Porsche GT3RS, and in between times fitting in a Saleen drive for Ray Mallock at the 24 hours of Le Mans and the odd Porsche race in FIA GTs and the ELMS. I have to say that so far, the highlight has been leading my class at Le Mans this year and running as high as eighth overall before engine failure cruelly took us out. However, this weekend I was back for my fifth race since Le Mans, in the American Le Mans Series at Laguna Seca.

Laguna Seca is one of my favourite tracks in the States, not so much because of the circuit itself - although that's great too - but the surrounding area of Monterey is fantastic. Loads of good fish restaurants, bars, and history, which is unusual in the States! There's even the odd art gallery where I can convince the extremely wealthy drivers such as David Brabham and co to part with some of their hard-earned cash!

On the Friday when I arrived at the circuit, the sun was shining and the whole team seemed to be in an unusually buoyant mood. I put this down initially to a good time the night before, but subsequently found out that it was more to do with that fact that we were to receive some long awaited updates from Porsche to help us take the fight to BMW and, from a pride point of view, beat at least one of the Alex Job Factory Porsches.

At this point I perhaps need to set the scene a little. At the beginning of the year, when I was still driving with good old Bob Wollek, the Porsche was still the car to have in the GT category of the ALMS. In the first race at Texas I thoroughly enjoyed a good clean fight with JJ Lehto, especially as I eventually got past him and pulled away. Later in the race his team mate Jorg Muller kindly punted Bob off, costing us a definite second place. When confronted, he told us to not to worry, because by the next race they would have the new M3GTR, and that we would only ever see them when they lapped us. Unfortunately, the sod was right!

However, with the new parts from Porsche, my new team mate Timo Bernhard (another young factory Porsche driver) and I felt confident that we could bridge the gap somewhat, and this turned out to be the case. Also, and perhaps more importantly, at some stage in every practice session, we were ahead of both Alex Job Porsches, which hadn't been the case, for one reason or another, since the Sebring 12 hours earlier in the year. It was Timo's turn to qualify and unfortunately he experienced a slight braking problem in qualifying which left us seventh in GT and only the third Porsche. But although we were disappointed, we both knew that we were in better shape than it looked for the race.

Timo took the start and did a great job to keep in touch with the second Alex Job Porsche of Pobst and Menzel, and we benefited from Nic Jonnson in one of the PTG BMWs visiting the Laguna scenery early on in the race, although fortunately he didn't hit anything and was OK to continue.

After an hour and twenty minutes, just as we were due to pit, there was a full course yellow thrown for Jan Magnussen, who had spun his Panoz up the pit entrance backwards and was lodged in the tyres just as you entered the pits. It was a very strange place to end up, but I believe Johnny Herbert might be able to shed some light on the subject.

This meant that my mate Brabs (David Brabham), wasn't going to get to drive. As I stood on the pit wall waiting for the pits to open so Timo could pit, I could hear David being interviewed and I remember feeling sorry for him until I remembered that he had knocked me off the track in the last race at Mid-Ohio, so I was probably safer with him not out there! (That's a joke by the way mate...).

When Timo pitted we unfortunately left it one lap too long under the yellow, because the lead Alex Job car of Sascha Maassen and Luhr along with all three of the BMWs ahead of us pitted one lap earlier and that meant that they got back out again in time to catch back up to safety car.

But when I got out of the pits I'd only gone three corners when the team got on the radio and shouted, "green, green, green, go for it!" I said, "I am going for it 'cos I haven't even caught up to the pack yet".

This basically meant that I spent the whole race driving my testicles off, without ever seeing any other GT car apart from when I was lapping the slower backmarkers. Unfortunately this also meant that I started my stint around 40 seconds behind the GT leaders and finished the race 40 seconds behind the leaders!

I only wish I could have been on their tail when we went green again and given them more of a run for their money. However, we finished a lap up on the second Alex Job car, which was nice, and on the same lap as the leaders, which trust me is no mean achievement, so all in all it was a reasonable weekend's work.

With the level of competition in the GT class this year and the quality of the drivers, along with the fact that the four BMWs should be in the GTS class, a top-five finish can be seen as a good result. Sascha Maassen and I decided that we had finished first and second in the Porsche Cup! Well, what do you expect? All racing drivers are eternal optimists with self-delusion tendencies...