Snow overcomes setbacks for podium finish at NJMP
June 12, 2014
(Team Release) TA3 International Class leader Russ Snow battled through a series of obstacle and threatened to win his second Trans Am race of the season before settling for a third place finish at New Jersey Motorsports Park. Snow now has stood on all three steps on the podium and has only failed to podium once so far in 2014. The third place finish along with a bonus point for leading the race now has Snow with a comfortable 38 point lead over Porsche driver Tim Grey for the 2014 TA3 International championship.
For Snow and his team, the NJMP event will be remembered for how little time they spent on the race track and how much time they spent pouring over manuals to find a problem. "We experienced loss of power during both practice sessions. The crew made several changes to the engine and we thought our issue was fixed until we broke during our first lap in qualifying,” Snow described.
"The crew continued to troubleshoot during the morning of the race and prepared the backup car as a last resort.
We finally fixed the engine issue by replacing the crank position sensor. Since all other Trans Am cars were on the grid, we only had a few minutes to add fuel, tires, and make minor adjustments before beginning the race."
Because he didn't get a fast lap in qualifying, Snow had to start the race at the back of the field. The Thunderbolt course at NJMP is fast, but not known for ease of passing. The track is narrow and passing zones are few. Even with that, Snow worked his way from the start of the race towards the front. " We were able to move several positions before the first full course caution. We restarted right behind Jason Berkeley and made the move into 1st place after passing Jason in turn 2.
With less than 10 laps to go, we set the fastest TA3 lap time of 1:25.09,” said Snow.
At that point Snow was in pretty good position. Then the frenzy that the team was in to get the car fixed and out to the grid for the start of the race came back to haunt them and to cost them the win. "Unfortunately, we didn't have enough time before the race to insure all three fuel tanks where completely topped off and (we) ran out of fuel.”
Snow scored his first Trans Am class win in Round 3 at Road Atlanta— a high speed, on the edge race track. Next up for the #20 Corvette team is Round 6 of the 2014 Trans Am Championship at the legendary Road America, another high speed race track that should fit nicely into Snow's driving style.
Trans Am Road Racing Series races next on June 21, 2014 at Road America in Wisconsin
