Brauns have winning strategy at Road America
Father helps guide son to victory with fuel advice
ELKHART LAKE - The relationship between a driver and his engineer can be a huge factor in motor sports, never more than when a race threatens to turn into a science fair.
That’s exactly what happened Sunday afternoon at Road America.
Speed was important and precision vital, but ultimately the Continental Tire Road Race Showcase was decided on fuel economy.
Enter Colin Braun.
No driver anywhere in racing has a closer connection to the man with the calculator.
Jeff Braun has known
Colin for all of his life. His calls and coaching put
Colin in the lead for the first time with two laps to go and helped the team to its second victory in the premier Prototype class of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season.
“I have a great engineer in my dad, obviously, who I know well,” Colin Braun said. “I can hear in his voice how much fuel savings we’re doing or how much we should be doing or if that was good or bad. I knew we were really, really tight.”
A Milwaukee native, Jeff Braun graduated from the Milwaukee School of Engineering and was one of the original crew members for eventual NASCAR Hall of Famer Alan Kulwicki of Greenfield.
Core Autosport timed an early pit stop perfectly as a caution fell during the process of Jonathan Bennett was turning over the car to Braun after reaching the minimum drive time. They’d been toward the back of the class but suddenly sat second after others came in. Then the strategy shifted toward fuel conservation.
“Certainly while we were saving fuel, I was lifting (off the throttle) early and coasting like everyone does, but the art of saving fuel comes down to minimizing
that lap-time loss,” Colin Braun said. “So I was driving as hard as I could through the corners and on the brakes and things like that.
“That’s where I was trying to keep (Jonathan) Bomarito in touch and at the same making the fuel number.”
As the clock ticked toward 2 hours 40 minutes, the end of the timed race, Jordan Taylor gave up the lead in the No. 10 Cadillac to pit with just over 5 minutes left and a lap later Bomarito brought the Mazda in for fuel.
The task for Braun, then was to tiptoe for two more laps in his ORECA LMP2.
He made it, finishing 2.389 seconds ahead of the ORECA of Misha Goikhberg and Stephen Simpson and then getting towed to victory lane after running out of gas on the cool-down lap.
Felipe Nasr and Eric Curran were third in a Cadillac DPi.
“As soon as the Mazda pitted, we knew that was a game-changer for us,” Braun said. “We had a big gap back to (Simpson and Curran).
“My dad did some quick math and we were able to back off a lot and make sure we weren’t sweating bullets to the start/ finish line.”
GT Le Mans
Ford’s game of hopscotch continued with Ryan Briscoe and Richard Westbrook winning for the second time in three races to retake the championship lead and giving the Chip Ganassi’s factory-backed team its fourth victory in a row.
“The wins aren’t coming easy by any stretch of the imagination,” Westbrook said.
Briscoe and Westbrook got a break when the BMW driven by Connor De Phillippi ran out of fuel two laps short of the finish. On what should have been the final stop, the BMW jumped ahead of the Ford but then couldn’t make it.
They finished 7.9 seconds ahead of the Corvette of Oliver Gavin and Tommy Milner.
The other Ford GT of Dirk Mueller and Joey Hand, that had started first in class, finished six laps down after a broken suspension piece required necessitated a
mid-race repair.
“That’s the ultimate goal, the championship,” Briscoe said. “We’ve got three races to go and a very tight battle. There’s no laying up. We’ve got to keep pushing, keep scoring the points, win when we can and come second when we can’t.”
GT Daytona
Patrick Long made the gas in his Porsche 911 GT3 last, giving himself and co-driver Christina Nielsen their first victory of the season. A big setup change Friday night – a cause of considerable discussion within the Wright Motorsports team – also was a boost the drivers needed.
“Patrick did an amazing job to put it on pole yesterday, drove flawlessly through his stints,” Nielsen said. “We didn’t have a perfect race until now. There were highlights, there were things that were improving, things that were getting better, but it wasn’t all put together and this was finally the weekend.”
Long, 37, is a three-time American Le Mans Series GT champion, and Nielsen, 26, became the first woman to win an IMSA title, also in the GTD class with Alessandro Balzan and Ferrari in 2016.