Mid Ohio Sports Car Course is such a great facility.  I always look forward to traveling to Lexington and fortunately, the Cooper Series will again visit Mid Ohio twice this season.  It was a long week, as the Series had two private test days on Tuesday and Wednesday prior to the beginning of the event.  On Wednesday, we solidly completed 82 laps, totaling nearly 185 miles.  82 laps around the 2.25 mile roller coaster ride around the high speed turn 1, Keyhole, fast back straight, Madness & Esses, Thunder Valley, and off camber left before the famed Carousel is quite a feat.  Mid Ohio is probably the most trying course on a driver in North America.  Drivers barely have a moment to take a breath, tug on their belts, or check their gauges during a lap.

During the test day, Glennon "GR" Reidler bested his times over last season.  He won twice here with us in 2004.  After the Wednesday test day, the weather turned gruesome with heavy rains on Thursday, then cooler temps for the remainder of the weekend.  We encountered about two hours of rain immediately prior to Sunday's race, which meant some very quick setup and tire decisions.  We decided on slicks and, although we were definitely in the minority on the grid, the conditions came into our favor, which had the rest of the teams bustling to switch to dry weather tires.  All in all it was a good weekend and we have a decent setup for our return in August.  Gold Cup competition is getting fierce, the autograph session drew long lines, and the Cooper Series staff delivered another great event.  Thanks Glennon -- I can't wait to read your perspective below.  

GLENNON REIDLER:

Where to start? I am glad I came up for a full test day. I still do not have the track down to where I can really run the times I need to be competitive. The car is there, the driver still needs some more seat time on the track. While I saw great improvement in Turns 1 and 11 (depends on whose map you're looking at), I seemed to give it back this time in Turns 5 & 6.

The weather really cooperated for the test day. We were able to run 82 laps (184.5 miles) throughout the day, with times dropping most in the last session before lunch. I was unable to better the late morning times in the afternoon which was disappointing. This was the first full test day I have participated in. I will do more!

Race one was fun but nothing to write home about. I made it through the first several turns avoiding the cars that didn’t, momentarily, and I mean that literally, taking the P1 spot. I was then quickly relegated to P2 and was running pretty good, until a full course caution was thrown to clean up the mess the kamikaze pilots made in the gravel traps at the start. I drove a clean race which cost me a bit by dropping me two positions by the checkered flag finishing in P3 in class. I learned some things about some drivers I had not raced against before, which I will take with me going forward.

Race 2 saw wet conditions. We chose to go with slicks right out of the paddock. It was quite interesting to watch some of the mind games teams played with each other as most came to the grid on wets, or two wets and two drys, and then did a mad dash to go to slicks when the 5 minute signal was given. For whatever reason, I did not feel comfortable pushing the car through the whole race. The car was there, but in the back of my mind I needed to get through a race weekend without having to dive once again into the checkbook for any more "unplanned" expenses. It has been a hard start to the season for HardRock Motorsport, LLC.

My lap times didn’t show on the dash from lap 1 so I had no idea of how slow I was running, which apparently was quite slow! Nothing really to speak of occurred during the race to make in memorable, other than I completed it with all the corners on the car, ready for the next event.

10/TENTHS Motorsport gave me a good car, and I look forward to our next outing.

Peace

GR