Focus, Mustang Keep Pace In CTSCC Points Battle

Focus, Mustang Keep Pace In CTSCC Points Battle

By Team Ford Racing Correspondent

Maybe it was 'just one of those days' -- one which went askew about as fast as way too many cars trying to fit where only two may otherwise dare to go.

In this case, when the dust settled for the first time, in the first lap and, indeed, in fewer than a few hundred feet beyond the starter's stand, eight usually front-running GS cars were fractured to various degrees, strewn along the way from Turn 1 to Turn 2.

Among those eight were Jack Roush Jr. and his No. 61 Roush Performance Mustang Boss.

'I was going through one, had a good line and, all of a sudden, got popped in the rear,' Roush said. 'Next thing I knew I was spinning off course.'

Others were spinning also, with plenty of banging being passed around for all.

'I limped back around to the pit, the guys put me together as best as they could, and I went back out,' Roush said.

It wasn't pretty, but the Roush Performance gang is looking at putting together a championship run and, as proved last year when Roush and co-driver Billy Johnson fell nine points shy of winning the championship, every point is important.

While woe may befall one in an incident such as that experienced by the Roush Performance team, someone often gains on the flipside -- as was the case for James Gué and his No. 15 Multimatic Ford Focus ST-R, both clearing the mayhem none the worse for wear, further improving his position to 14th overall in the two-class, Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge.

Insofar as the Focus ST-R's Street Tuner's (ST) classification, Gué's aversion of needlessly crashing propelled he and the car into 2nd-place for the race's subsequent Lap 7 restart -- in which a yellow was again thrown when some in the 78-car field decided to crash before even reaching the green flag being thrown at the end of the first caution period.

'We had an extended caution (13 laps) for that one so just before we went green I pulled back into the pits and Billy got in,' Roush said. 'While we weren't where we would've preferred to be, plenty of racing was still ahead and Billy can do some pretty amazing driving. Unfortunately, the engine soon started overheating.'

A malfunctioning cooling system, owed to a radiator believed injured in the first-lap, first-turn unplanned off, was damaged so slightly it went unnoticed -- until the coolant ran dry.

'Billy's a pretty sharp guy,' Roush said of his co-driver, 'So we saved the engine. We put in another radiator but by that time we'd lost a lot of laps.'

Still, the team's 2011 nine-point, end-of-season deficit spurred it onward despite being 11-laps down.

In all, it took about 27 laps to get the CTSCC race really 'started' after 24 of those laps were completed under caution, each lap taking roughly double the time in its completion as would a lap at full speed.

'I didn't like the two-month layoff from the first race,' Johnson said.

'I'm not sure what it was, whether skills were lost during the extended layoff, guys were rusty, they lacked skills in the first place or what it was, but there were a bunch of airheads out there today and I just don't particularly care for airheads on a race track,' a clearly frustrated Johnson fumed after the race.

While the Roush Performance folks were bummed, the Multimatic crew was far from such -- that is, until too few gallons of gas flowed into the No. 15's gas tank.

'With the gas hose in and presumably flowing, none ever came out of the gas vent (indicating the Focus ST-R's tank was full),' Multimatic's Larry Holt noted after the race.

'It's perplexing because we're not sure why we had an apparent malfunction,' Holt said.

Gué believed a clear answer existed: 'First, we never ran out of gas. Therefore, the Ford EcoBoost engine must be far more efficient than given credit.'

Whatever the case, the extra time in the pits awaiting a full-tank signal from the vent cost the team a top-10 finish, with Gué co-driver Gunnar Jeannette ultimately guiding the Focus to a 28th overall and 14th-place finish in the ST class, precisely one spot ahead of its No. 16 sister Focus ST-R, driven by Bret Seafuse and Nick Mancuso.

While Holt predicted the team would resolve the matter long before the April 28 CTSCC race at Homestead-Miami Speedway, he was a self-described 'happy camper' with the pace of the Focus ST-R program, now but two races into its first-ever season.

'We've clearly got a top-10-capable car at this point,' Holt excitedly said, a point of view separately echoed by Gué.

'When you consider where we were when we left Daytona and where we are one race later, I'm very encouraged.'

Though the Roush Performance team recorded a disappointing 56th-place overall and 21st-in-class finish at the same BMP Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge race, Roush afterward noted one important comparison to the team's 2011 pace.

'Even with this finish, we're still ahead of where we were last year after two races into the season. I'll take it.'

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