2010-07-08 

Douglas Lovegrove, Crew Chief/Engineer, Amico Racing Inc.

Thursday night we had some trouble with our hauler and made it to Mirabel with just enough time to get the last two practice sessions in on Friday.

 First session ended early do to an electrical glitch; the second session wasn’t much better in my opinion. Dean’s comment was something like “this car handles like Shit”.  Well that was not surprising since we were on the Mosport setup from 3 weeks ago, right away we made some changes for Saturday practice. Basically our car has a bad push turning left and was loose when turning right, this is not a good thing in case you’re wondering. The car for the most part is symmetrical meaning the same on the left and the right. The only real difference is the camber settings on the car are exclusive to each side; this is due to the fact that no track has the same corners going left as right. So we may have 5 degrees negative camber on the left front and 4.5 degrees negative camber on the right front for example.  The car should behave the same regardless of what direction Dean steers it and this was not the case. We were aware of a wheel base issue left over from our last shunt at Mosport and I suspect this was the cause of the issue. My plan was to compromise rear grip to the point where the car would at least stop snap oversteering when Dean went right and push less when he went Left. It kind of worked but Dean was still pretty unhappy with the car.

For qualifying we really softened up the front end and we got quicker but still nowhere close to where we needed to be. Saturday’s race was a mess right from the start for us and ended up being a mess for some other teams. I was surprised to see the Hyundai Genesis Coupe on the pole but Sasha Anis did an awesome job in qualifying to get it there. I was sorry to see them have problems and get put out of the race. We brushed the wall before the first lap was over due to a spun car leading onto the front straight, the front right wheel was bent so we came in and did a pit stop. The car was drivable but it must have had an inch of toe out so Dean just kicked around for the race to get the points. We later discovered we had bent the rear trailing arm as well, Yvan Turcotte who runs Aldo/Northwest Racing lent us the parts to get back on track Sunday so we had a late night Saturday getting everything 100% again.

Sunday we started the race 31st reflecting our finish on Saturday. We weren’t happy with the car and any chance of improvement was lost when we missed the Sunday morning practice due to do some car thieves who stole our vehicle from the Hotel. Hint to Novotel by the airport in Montreal, get some bloody video cameras in your parking lot, better lighting and a security guard. So Sunday’s race was going to be a crap shoot to say the least, we had a lot of traffic to get though so we spaced out spotters all over the track to help Dean deal with the traffic. On the drop of the green Dean had five positions before the start/finish line, we were in the top ten in no time with Dean trying to hold off the Honda of Benjamin Distaulo whohad started one sport behind us. A full course yellow regrouped us with the leaders and it was starting to look like a top 5 possibly, we had more than half the race to go. Dean had trouble getting past some of the guys but considering the car it was really an impressive run. With 6 or so laps to go Tom Kwok used his Mitsubishi EVO to climb the pit wall and ended up on his roof in the middle of the front straight. The race was red flagged and scored based on the last completed lap, so although we came across the line in 6th we were scored 8th with Tom kwok scored in 6th even though he was on his roof in the middle of the track! 

I was totally impressed with Deans driving on Sunday and it reminded me of why I’m involved with these guys, I was totally unimpressed with the Jerks who stole our truck from the Novotel parking lot and the ASN/FIA rule that scores upside down destroyed cars ahead of the ones that made it across the line!

Dean Fantin, Driver, Amico Racing Inc.

Going into this weekend I had very high hopes since ICAR is not as dependant on horsepower. We had a very quick car last year and this season the car has improved tremendously. After the events that had taken place in the first four races I didn’t have a great feeling, it’s kind of funny because I was discussing this with my girlfriend and she had said that the feeling meant that there will be an adventure coming my way.

We arrived at the track around noon on Friday and I was incredibly excited to just get on the track even though it was just to shake the car down. It felt great running on the slick concrete track, on the fourth lap the car had an electrical shortage from the main power switch so I ended up along the wall watching the other drivers pushing their cars trying to find grip.  As a driver it is very hard to watch from the side lines and this is a feeling I have been getting to familiar with this season. The team fixed the problem and we went back out for the final session of the day and ran the full 25 minutes. I thought that even though we didn’t exactly make any improvement as far as time, we did use the track time very wisely.  After pulling into the pits several times and discussing what the car was doing and what I wanted it to do, Doug made many changes and we narrowed down the exact direction we need to head in to make the car faster.

Saturday started off with high hopes and a much livelier team after finally getting some decent sleep that we all so desperately needed after the few crazy nights previous. The morning practice went well and we picked up time but we were still not where we needed to be. I wasn’t exactly happy with the way the car was handling either. We made a few more changes before we went out for the qualifying session and it did not help the car a whole lot. We made a few small changes during the session but still nothing seemed to have the effect that Doug and I were trying to achieve. So, I made the best of the session as far as experimenting with my driving line. I was really moving the car all over the track to see if I could find any other grip or something out of the ordinary that the car would like. We ended up a half second quicker and I feel that we had more in it but Jacques Gravel for some reason felt like he needed to try and keep me behind him. I tried slowing down a great amount to build room but he was so far off the pace I would catch up to him in a few corners. He ruined the last five minutes of the session and I was livid! Nothing is more frustrating for a driver then when he is trying his absolute hardest to put together the perfect lap, and another driver tries to be a hero and stops you from achieving your goal. We ended up qualifying 12th.

I went into the first race very concentrated on being incredibly smooth, I knew that a lot of the cars will fall off the pace due to the tight corners and abrasive concrete track surface. We lost one position between the 1st and 2nd corner and I was right on his bumper through the rest of the track, as we came out of the last corner a car spun and was left side ways on the track. Doug came on the radio to warn me as quick as possible but it was just too late. I tried to avoid him which I did but came in contact with the wall. We did a pit stop to change a bent rim but the toe was pretty far out so I stayed out just to collect the points. We finished a disappointing 31st. Once we took a closer look at the damage we discovered that the lower front control arm was bent along with the rear lower control arm and trailing arm. Also the right side wheelbase closed up ¾” and the rear toe opened up ½”. We had a late night putting the car right.

Sunday presented a large challenge by having to start 31st and move through the aggressive field as quickly as possible. Since some of the geometry was still out the team had no idea how far we could come up through the field. I felt that we could get up to around 10th. The start of the race was crazy! I have never seen so many cars so aggressive! It looked like a school of fish that you see on the discovery channel who are trying to get away from a predator. I moved through the field swiftly and was closing up on the leaders when Kwok went wide getting onto the front straight and hit the wall putting himself on his roof.  The race was red flagged and due to our series rules, they decided to go back two laps for the final standings leaving Kwok, the man who caused his own accident to remain in the position where he lost control. I was very frustrated about this as was many of the other teams. In my mind I finished 6th, but the official results show 8th. At the end of the weekend, I was not happy about all the things that had gone wrong, but the last race was incredible! Even though the car wasn’t up to par, we pulled through and went from 32nd to 6th in 23 minutes of the race since it was red flagged. I’m proud of myself and the team and have a great feeling heading into the Honda Indy!

Amico Racing is participating in the Castrol Canadian Touring Car Championship for their second year in 2010, last year they finished 9th in the Championship. Amico Racing is supported by the Labours Union, KML Building Solutions, Aon Insurance and many more. Check them out at www.amicoracing.com