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MID OHIO - ANOTHER PODIUM!
21/05/2006
From the heat of Houston a week ago, next stop was north to the cooler, damper conditions of the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course at Lexington. The 2.25-mile/13-turn permanent road course track is set in scenic hills some 60 miles north of Columbus, Ohio and has been venue to many classic sports car races in the past.
As with his Aston Martin team-mates Tomas Enge, Pedro Lamy and Stephane Sarrazin, Darren was making his debut at the track but he soon got to grips with the layout and said of Mid-Ohio, “It’s a fantastic track; challenging and good fun and just the sort I like plus it suited our cars more than Sebring or Houston had.”
Grip was something of a talking point all weekend as the track had been re-surfaced at the end of last year and the new tarmac didn’t always offer the levels of grip required or desired – especially when it rained. “We found that our Pirelli tyres took a lot longer than normal to get up to temperature and grip, up to 5 laps at times, and that was obviously a bit of a concern for us for the race as we knew it was going to be extremely close and competitive. We were fortunate it didn’t rain for the race as Mid-Ohio could easily have become Mud-Ohio and the track was like glass in the wet.”
It was Tomas Enge’s turn to qualify and, after a typically feisty effort from the Czech, he got pole though it was a very close run battle with the Gavin/Beretta Corvette – just three hundredths of a second separated them. Unusually, Darren and Tomas were unable to agree this weekend on the optimum set up of the car so a degree of compromise was brought to bear but, as Darren noted, “this didn’t affect the outcome of the race and definitely won’t be an issue at our next race.”
The Briton once again took the start but was unlucky to be blocked at the green flag by a slow-starting prototype. “The left lane for some reason didn’t go when the flag dropped,” said Turner. “The right lane was away and the lead Corvette got past me. I cut across to make sure the other Corvette didn’t go through. It took three or four laps to get heat into the tyres and then I was a bit lucky with some of the traffic, but the strategy was good and it is a pity we didn’t get more from it. The second Corvette was on my tail by about lap 4 and the only time I ever broke from him was in traffic so that was 50 minutes of intense concentration.”
The Aston Martin Racing team ran an aggressive strategy which allowed Turner to lead the GT1 category by the end of his opening stint. The British driver was the last of the class to pit and hand to Enge, but any advantage gained was lost almost immediately as the Czech driver had to return to the pits after just one lap when he suffered a puncture.
"A fantastic pit stop by the team meant that Tomas re-joined 3rd in class and set about closing the gap to the leaders with a series of fast laps, but chances of victory had effectively slipped through our fingers thanks to the puncture. Then, to add insult to injury, a third safety car period late in the race dropped our number 007 car to a lap behind the winners at the chequered flag. Hugely frustrating when you consider how close it could have been.
“Despite the result not being what we’d hoped for, I’m personally quite pleased with how my time behind the wheel is going in the ALMS this year. I’ve always managed to bring our car home in front of our sister car, with a gap, and haven’t had any incidents or accidents. Let’s hope that continues for the next race, the biggest test of them all, the 24 Hours of Le Mans on 17th/18th June.”
Darren, 34, lives near Banbury in Oxfordshire. Successful in many different categories of motorsport, his most notable and high profile victories have been at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and in the British Touring Car Championship. He's a firm favourite with teams, fans, and media alike from around the world.
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