Life is a rollercoaster and so is Laguna Seca

Sometimes racing cars can feel like being on a rollercoaster and that perfectly describes the experience of driving around the twisty and undulating Laguna Seca track (scene of Darren Turner’s return to the IMSA Weathertech SportsCar Championship last weekend). It also served as a perfect metaphor for the Briton’s weekend standing in for Tom Gamble in The Heart of Racing Team [THOR] Aston Martin Vantage GT3.

“It was definitely an up and down weekend,” said Turner. “It was so much fun racing with the team again in IMSA, and the car was great to drive, but we didn’t manage to get the result we’d hoped for at the beginning of the weekend.”

Turner and his GTD class team-mate Casper Stevenson ultimately finished 12th in the class, following a challenging weekend on-track and left both drivers with a genuine sense of what might have been if the cards had fallen just ever so slightly differently.

“Casper did a great job in qualifying to go third fastest,” said Turner of the young British driver he was partnered alongside. “It’s clear he has a lot of potential and he was very quick all weekend.”

But after the session, IMSA officials deemed that the car was fractionally under the minimum ride-height and the duo were told to start from the back of the grid for the race.

One of THOR’s strengths is its ability to be creative with race strategies to overcome challenging track position, and thus after Stevenson had passed the slowest cars at the beginning of the race and latched on to the back of the pack, the team went into action.

“It was always going to be hard to make progress on a track that is notoriously difficult to overtake on,” said Turner. “Once we’d got past the stragglers, Casper’s progress stalled so the team boxed him out of sequence to give him clean air and try and jump the cars in front of us.

“That strategy worked and Casper was flying. The only problem was that one of the BMWs had opted to do the same thing, and he became a cork in the bottle for Casper once we caught him up.”

When most of the pack pitted later, on a more conventional strategy, Stevenson found himself in front of them. But by now he was on older tyres.

“That’s when it all started to unravel,” said Turner. “Casper did his best to defend from the Porsche behind us, but when they reached Turn 5 the driver chasing sent it down the inside and fired Casper into the outside wall. Luckily, he was able to get the car going and continue, although he had sustained front-end damage.”

To add to the insult, Stevenson was given a stop-and-go penalty for blocking the same car, which also received a penalty for the assault on the Aston Martin.

“The recovery, the stop and the damage to the car all cost us a lot of time,” said Turner, “so once I got in the car the job was just to get it home as best I could.”

Darren recovered four positions during his stint, but there was only so much that he could achieve given the situation he found himself in. “Casper had reported that the balance was towards understeer even before the incident, but the damage certainly didn’t help this,” said Turner. “What was fun however was that a fast Corvette was catching me in the closing laps. It was driven by my mate Matt Bell, so it was great to hold him off, beat him over the line and have a smile about it afterwards.”

In a career that spans four decades, Turner has been around long enough to know you have to be sanguine when faced with a challenging day behind the wheel. “The result is nothing special, but the opportunity to race with THOR was. The team is great, and being able to work with Casper all weekend was a treat,” he said.

“It also gave me chance to get some valuable miles under my belt in the GT3 ahead of the next round of the GT World Challenge America. And any opportunity to sharpen up with this class of car is very welcome.”

Turner has no time to dwell on what might have been as he now heads to THOR’s US headquarters at Phoenix for a spell on the simulator, before getting behind the wheel of his GTWC America Vantage at the world famous Sebring circuit next weekend.