Terry Borcheller - Virginia race

Virginia charge

 

Terry Borcheller enjoyed a strong run during the Oct. 9 Rolex Sports Car
Series race at Virginia International Raceway in Alton, Va., but a suspected
electrical gremlin stopped his charge. Borcheller, of Gainesville, Ga.,
teamed with Hugo Guenette of Blainville, Qué., in the No. 15 CB Motorsports
Pontiac-powered Riley Mk XI.

 

Guenette started the race from 16th on the 48-car grid, with start positions
based on team points after the qualifying session was rained out. Despite an
occasional electrical problem that caused havoc with the engine, he moved up
to sixth during the first 40 minutes of the two-hour 45-minute race. A few
minutes later, he had contact with another car, judged by race officials to
be his fault. He incurred a one-minute penalty, dropping him to 18th in the
Daytona Prototype class, one lap behind the race leader. He raced back to
16th before handing off to Borcheller at 1h10.

 

Borcheller quickly regained the lost lap and moved to 11th, but he, too, was
plagued by the electrical problem, likely caused by heavy rain during the
race week. At 1h35, he pulled off track to try to restart his car's engine.
He was able to limp back to the pit lane, where the team retired the car
from the race.

 

"Hugo had a problem with it – occasionally, the motor would just cut out.
When I got in, I was having problems intermittently, but I could still go
pretty good," Borcheller said. "All of a sudden the motor just quit and I
pulled off to deal with it. It would start and go for a little bit again, so
I just tried to nurse it back to the pits. The team thinks it's something
electrical, something to do with the water we encountered all weekend."

 

tough beginnings

 

Borcheller had difficult starts to both his race weekend and his race stint.
He missed the opening-day practice on Thursday because of highway gridlock
en route from Atlanta, and he was blinded on his first fast lap.

 

"There was a traffic jam on the drive up from Atlanta where I sat on the
freeway for three hours total. At one point, I sat in the same spot for an
hour! There were two separate incidents that kept us from getting there," he
reported.

 

"The car was not really set up for the wet; it had no grip at all. On my
first green lap, the 09 car went off the track  and dropped a wheel in the
mud and totally sprayed the whole front of our car. I had so much mud on the
windshield, I couldn't see anything. That didn't help. It was just not a
real fun race, and to DNF [did not finish] was disappointing."

 

next

 

Borcheller will drive a Saleen S7R in the American Le Mans Series season
finale at Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey, Calif., on Oct. 15.

 

###

 
Sylvia Proudfoot
HYPERLINK "mailto:sylvia@spurcom.ca"sylvia@spurcom.ca
403 287 3945