Backstretch Motorsports

The raw numbers from Sebring don’t paint a pretty picture for Bell Motorsports: their GT1 Aston Martin DBR9 piloted by Terry Borcheller, Chapman Ducote and Antonio Garcia finished 29 laps down on the class-winning Corvette of Johnny O’Connell, Ron Fellows and Jan Magnussen … and 21 laps in arrears of the sister Corvette of Olivier Beretta, Oliver Gavin and Max Papis even though the latter car lost time replacing a broken halfshaft.

Speed? Well the two Corvettes posted fastest laps of 1:57.087 and 1:57.802, respectively while the best Borcheller could manage in the DBR9 was a 1:59.802 - a two-second differential that more or less echoed the times set in practice.

But as often is the case in motorsports, there’s more than meets the eye to the renewal of Aston Martin’s GT1 battle with Corvette. For openers, while the two Corvettes enjoyed a relatively untroubled week of practice prior to the race, the Bell Aston Martin spent the week on jack stands after mechanics discovered cracks in the car’s right front upper shock mount after Monday’s practice. By the time two new chassis rails had been delivered from England and the car reassembled, it was almost time to go racing.

“We only had two practice sessions, the second one being 20 minutes long and called ‘qualifying’ by the other competitors,” says team owner Jim Bell. “So we tried to do a week’s worth of work in two sessions and then go racing. Under the circumstances, you have to be pleased with the job the team did. Just finishing at Sebring is the object of the exercise. Doing well is what you hope for.”

Jim Bell: “Under the circumstances, you have to be pleased with the job the team did.”
Making the task of doing well all the more challenging is the fact that the Bell Aston Martin is running on Dunlop tires rather than the Michelins the factory team ran on their Aston Martins at Sebring the past several seasons (and the full American Le Mans Series schedule in ‘06), and which Team Modena is using in the European Le Mans Series this year (and which Michelin North America declined to supply to Bell owing to finite resources and its existing commitments). So throw-out all the data garnered on the Michelins and start from scratch with the Dunlops …

And it only gets more complicated.

“Dunlop made an educated decision on which tires to supply us,” Bell continues. “The car was good at the test (in January) but not in the race itself. Again, Dunlop took its best guess as to what would work but the tires we had for the 12 hours were two seconds slower than the tires we had at the test.

“The DBR9 is a beautifully engineered car, but it’s designed to run on Michelins with Koni shocks. We haven’t been able to get the Michelins and the Konis just don’t work at Sebring. So we were doing our own shock development work, again without much in the way of a database.”

So Bell Motorsports went into the 12 Hours of Sebring with the most realistic of expectations, recognizing it stood little chance of matching the Corvettes on speed and hoping only to catch a lucky break.

And when the Beretta/Gavin/Papis Corvette crept into the pits with its broken halfshaft, it seemed Bell might have caught the break it needed.

“We saw the Corvette go behind the wall and while we don’t wish any ill luck on them, we realized we had a chance to finish second.” said Bell Motorsports team manager Doug Smith.

That chance evaporated when Ducote slithered off course at Turn 10 - joining a long list of drivers to explore the scenery there during the race - then damaged the splitter and undertray when he climbed a curb in his effort to get back on the conventional racing surface. By the time the damage was repaired, Bell Motorsports’ chance at a modest upset was gone.

“It was really unfair to Chapman, who had all of 14 laps in the car before the start of the race,” says Bell. “He did a good job, although he spun at Turn 10 - like a lot of folks - and we had to make a long pit stop to fix the car. But apart from that we had no mechanical issues with the car. Terry did a great job and Antonio was superb. He came up through the ranks step for step with Fernando Alonso; he just didn’t have the resources to get to Formula One like Alonso. We were very happy with the job he did. Again, Chapman did a good job too, he just needs more time in the car.”

But time is not on Ducote’s side or, for that matter, anyone at Bell Motorsports in the near future. Next up comes the St. Petersburg race on April 5, then two weeks later comes another street race at Long Beach. With the Series sharing the bill with the IndyCar Series both weekends, track time will be at a premium.

So it won’t be until after Long Beach that the team will have chance to catch its breath and, perhaps, take a step forward rather than running flat out to stay in place.

“We’ve already pulled the car apart and we’re evaluating the things we think were keeping us from getting a better handle on it at Sebring and making some adjustments,” says Smith. “Then we’re looking at St. Pete - it’s a very short race. Then there’s no time because you’ve got to come back and quickly get prepared to take off for California. Since the Houston race has been canceled, we’d like to do some testing right after that. We’ll have a fresh engine to start that with, which we’re excited about, and then we’ll have the time after that, because after the race at Miller Motorsports Park in May there’s the June break.

“So the tentative plan is we want to do some testing after Long Beach and be really on our toes for Salt Lake City. Then that will give us a launching pad for what we want to do in the longer break when everybody else goes off to Le Mans. That’s when we figure we can do the most and get the things made or get them ordered in if we need somebody else to make ‘em.”

Meanwhile, Bell Motorsports is taking a methodical and disciplined approach to its development program. While development parts are available from Aston Martin on the same basis as other teams running DBR9s in European series, Smith says the team needs to more fully understand what they already have before slapping-on “go faster” bits.

“Aston Martin will say, ‘We’ve developed this part, we tested it at Paul Ricard and it was this much faster. If you want it, it will cost this much,’” says Smith. “And we’ll say ‘OK we want it, we’ll buy it,’ or we’ll say ‘We want it but we’re going to wait because what we’re dealing with - this is hypothetical - but with what we’re dealing with bringing the car to the different tires, it’s gonna confuse the progress we’re making there.’ So you’ve got to play the poker hand you’ve been dealt.

“So there’s nothing held back, (but) it’s still up to us to go our own direction of where we’re going and not lose sight of what we’re trying to do on a day-to-day basis. Because, as I say, if you’ve developed this part and it’s going to give you this much more braking capability and we realize that we haven’t optimized our setup to take advantage of that braking improvement because we’re chasing the tire right now, we may not take that part immediately.”

That chase will bear fruits sooner or later, sooner if Bell gets a handle on the Dunlop tires and other variables on the DBR9 in the upcoming tests; later if, as planned, Bell and Team Modena join forces for Petit Le Mans as a prelude to a partnership for the full 2009 American Le Mans Series calendar.

In the meantime, the Bell Aston Martin will continue chasing the Corvettes in the hopes that those daunting numbers from Sebring can be turned into a prettier picture.

“Step by step, that’s the way Jim does things, and our goal is to get faster as each race goes by,” says Smith. “There’s always progress and that’s what’s satisfying. If it was easy it probably wouldn’t be AS satisfying.

“There’s a couple of pretty girls out there dressed in yellow and black and we’re chasin’ them … sometimes the chase is as much fun as the catch!”

David Phillips is one of North America’s most respected and renowned motorsports journalist. His ‘Another Turn’ features will appear periodically on americanlemans.com throughout the season. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Le Mans Series.