Hello all,

Haven’t updated the website in quite some time so I thought I’d check in and give a brief update.  Our Long Beach Grand Prix race with the Aston Martin DBRS9 did not go quite as well as we’d hoped.  Not to make more excuses, but our rather lackluster showing was prompted by a lack of preseason testing in my eyes.  Being that we are based in Chicago, winter testing is a bit more of an effort for us.  Furthermore we spent almost all winter changing over the engine management system to Motec and re-mapping the entire engine from scratch!  I don’t think our car went “vroom-vroom” until late February!  We tried to do two quick test days at our local track before Long Beach but one of them was simply to set up all the ECU parameters etc and the second test day was about 48 degrees Fahrenheit!  I definitely learned to control the car in an oversteer situation but other than that we weren’t able to gather too much useful information on chassis setup; so we put something on that “should” be good and loaded up the truck.  Flash forward and now it’s the first practice session and I’m sitting in the car thinking: “I’ve only driven this car in one race having never sat in it before, had two days of semi-testing, can’t personally afford to replace even the Aston Martin logo on the hood if I crash, and am about to be one of the first run groups on a rubber-free street course lined with 5,000lb concrete barriers; no big deal!!”  However, as I said on the radio before I went out “that’s why they pay me the big bucks!!”  :)

The first lap out on that track was really amazing.  I had seen it on TV so many times but it really is a whole other viewpoint from the driver’s seat.  I sit pretty low in the Aston so visibility is a bit of an issue anyways, but a street course is mostly blind corners and it really gets your attention when you come into Turn 1 at 165mph!  On top of all of that I don’t want to look like too much of a “wanker,” so I can’t go TOO slowly.  After all, I am driving arguably the most beautiful and most crowd appealing car in the paddock.  Every driver feels the need to prove himself constantly until you win the F1 Driver’s Title, so when we struggled a lot with set up throughout the weekend and my lap times were way off what I felt I should be doing it was a very tough weekend for me mentally.  The mental aspect of driving is just as much if not more important than the physical aspect of driving a racecar.  We fought for power down grip and stability under braking throughout the weekend.  We definitely made gains in both areas, but just not enough to be competitive.  The best we could manage in Qualifying was 17^th; and I promise it was not through a lack of effort.  My crew guys Mike, Ove, and Ray worked their butts off and I came so close to hitting a wall exiting the fountain that I knocked a valve stem out of a tire and it went down that lap!  In any case, without blabbering on we started and finished the race in 17^th position.  With 36 cars on a tight little track there were still some interesting moments!  It was a bit of a letdown that we were unable to extract more out of the car as I really wanted to put on a good showing for the Lake Forest Sportscars Motorsports team, Aston Martin and all of my buddies that drove down from Santa Barbara to watch me race.  It was an amazing experience though to drive on such a historic track in front of a few hundred thousand people, so I hope I don’t come off as complaining- I’m lucky enough that I’m even able to get frustrated at things like this.  Most people probably wouldn’t sympathize too much with the kid complaining that his Aston Martin racecar is not quite fast enough, but I just wanted to represent the beautiful car and my great team with a good performance and I just wasn’t able to.  The good news is that we have learned A LOT about the car.  In fact, when we got back to Chicago and went through and changed some things we didn’t like we were able to run 3 seconds a lap faster at our home test track!  If I had that in my back pocket in California we would have fought for the win!  One thing that I have to mention though is that even though we weren’t on the front row, nobody cared!  Hundreds of people came up to me to talk about the car and thousands more took pictures with it and loved it.  They could care less if I was a minute off the pace as long as they could hear that screaming V12 go by.  The fans at this race were awesome and were the highlight of the weekend for me.

  As of now we haven’t entered any more World Challenge races because we are not operating with a limitless budget and when we race we want to fight for a win or at least a top 5.  We have been able to greatly improve the car but we are not QUITE there yet and we have run into some cooling issues with the engine and brakes (definitely a contributing factor to Long Beach braking performance; our brakes were so hot there that there are pictures of the car with the brake discs glowing bright red in the daylight and they burned right through our 1300 degree temperature paint!).  Hopefully we can solve the cooling issues and continue to develop the chassis.  I can tell you that the car is already much more drivable than it was at Long Beach and it is a lot more fun and a lot less frustrating.    We are currently continuing on with testing and development for next year.

As a racing driver you never want to sit on the sidelines and watch other people out there racing.  In fact, it’s pretty tough for me to even go to the racetrack sometimes when I am not racing because I want to be in a car so badly.  It is frustrating not having a full season ride at the moment, but it is also that much more motivation to work hard and secure the partners I need to put in place for next year.  I have been discussing the 2011 season with several companies and manufacturers and really hope to put together something more full time for next year.  Hopefully, if and when I put something big together I will appreciate it that much more having spent much of 2010 on the wrong side of pit wall!

I have not been completely sitting around of course.  I have done a few vintage races and some amateur endurance races as well as coaching so it is good to still get into different cars and stay sharp.  Outside of the racing world I have been working at my family’s dealership and learning the ropes of the car business.  And of course for those that know me I have been up to my usual hobbies and have been out spearfishing and catching snakes around the country in the past few months.  I am also preparing to run in an outdoor foot race (trust me I prefer having an engine and wheels!) in California called the Tough Mudder challenge.  I will run in Bear Valley, CA on October 9^th.  It is a 7mile loop up and down the ski mountain with 19 obstacles designed by the British Special Forces.  Suddenly the walls of Long Beach aren’t the scariest thing I’ve done in 2010!!  Stay tuned as the next season is just around the corner!

Thanks,

Nick