Acumen Motorsports making inroads into road racing
Comments (...)It wasn't exactly the way that Accumen Motorsports had envisioned it. Putting together a team of drivers for this year's Rolex 24 at Daytona, both Doug Grunnet and Tony Kester had high hopes for their Porsche GT3 entrant.
"Our goal was to run 24 hours at an average speed of 100-miles per hour, including pit stops," Grunnet, a Morris resident said of his team's attempt to tame the Daytona International Speedway's road course.
The best of laid plans.
However, after averaging over 99.5 miles per hour over the first 22 hours, the local road warriors plans hit a snag.
"We completed 626 laps (2,228.56 miles) in just over 22 hours," Grunnet said. "At which time third gear went out in the transmission, resulting in an oil leak which took us out of the race."
Up until then, the team was eying up a possible top-15 finish because of the way that the driving team of Grunnet, Kester - a Coal City resident, Frank Del Vecchio, Scott McKee and Randy Pobst were responding to the challenge.
"The team worked flawlessly together; the pit stops, driver changes and scheduled maintenance such as break-pad replacement, gas and tires, went just as planned," Grunnet said. "In fact, our race was flawless until the transmission problem."
In the end, Team Acumen finished 38th overall out of the 60 entrants and it was 25th in the GT Class.
A.J. Allmendinger's team comprising of Oswaldo Negri, John Pew and Justin Wilson won it in their Ford Riley in the DP class, averaging 126.3 miles-per-hour. The top 10 teams were all in the DP class with the top GT team being John Potter's team of Andy Lally, Richard Lietz and Rene Rast in their Porsche GT3.
The best lap, which is 3.56 miles long, by Acumen Motorsports was done in 111.043 seconds, which computes out to 115.4 miles-per-hour.
We had the potential of finishing 15th or better had not the transmission failed," Grunnet said.
A true test of man and machine.
"In this case, the machine came up just a little short," Grunnet said. "However, as a team, we are quite proud of ourselves. Grand-Am officials, as well as the track announcers, and those on Speed Channel made several positive comments about the efforts of our team and their disappointment that we were not able to complete the full 24 hours."
Kester said that after spending years in the field as a professional race-car driver he's never seen a race run like the one at Daytona International two weekends ago.
"The intensity of this one was different. This one was more like a sprint race from start to finish," he said. "Generally at some point you have to ease off a little in the race, but not this one. I think because everyone is using the same tires (Continental by Hoosier), which are absolutely the best I've ever seen, it is the reason everyone was so wide-open. It was the most intense race I have ever seen down there.
"People were wide-open the whole way — going as fast as they could. It's more of a sprint race now, and to compete you have to go for it."
Now that the team has pulled back into Morris, Acumen is planning what to do next.
"Our next project that we are looking for sponsors for is the innagural Indianapolis Grand-Am event at the Speedway, as well as Watkins Glen Six Hour race," Grunnet said.
Considering the way Team Acumen ran in its first time out, Kester thinks that it may be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
"I think we opened some eyes down there as a new team with an older car," he said. "Certainly the goal of any racing team is driven by money and a lot of what we are going to do depends on sponsorships and the number of people we get involved with the team."
For those interested in seeing the actual Porsche driven by Team Acumen down at Daytona International 12 days ago, you can go to Greenway Motors in Morris to view the car. The auto will be on display for a limited time at Greenway with members of the team being on hand this Saturday between 11 a.m. until 2 p.m.
"Tom and his staff are obvious car enthusiasts and have always taken an interest in local car events and activities," Grunet said. "Tom has been helpful to our efforts and offered us the opportunity to display the car, showing the fans what a race car looks like untouched after competing in this most grueling event."
Perhaps better described — rode hard.
"It will be interesting for the people to see the car because it's going to be in as-finished condition," Kester said. "The car was in show-car condition when we started, but we want the people to see the beating the car takes at a race like this. Basically paint has been sand-blasted off the front of the car and there is rubber all over it."
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