Terry Borcheller - Petit Le Mans race

ALMS final

Terry Borcheller successfully completed the American Le Mans Series season 
with a solid finish in the 1000-mile Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta on Oct. 18.  
The Phoenix driver combined with Shane Lewis of Jupiter, Fla., and Darren Law 
of Phoenix for a seventh-place GT finish in the No. 63 ACEMCO Motorsports 
Ferrari 360 Modena GT.

Borcheller qualified 10th in class with a lap time of one minute 35.656 
seconds on the 2.54-mile road course.  He drove the first hour of the race, 
followed by Law and Lewis.  The three continued the rotation through 9.5 hours, 
surviving a race marked by aggressive driving that drew eight full-course cautions. 
 Borcheller drove the final stint to a seventh-place GT finish.

"At the beginning, they [the other competitors] were not driving like a 
thousand-mile race," Borcheller noted.  "They were taking a lot of chances.  We 
have to take chances because our car is down on power, so for us it was normal.  
But I was surprised to see the faster cars taking the chances they were 
taking."

finishing touches

In the final 15 minutes of the race, Borcheller narrowly avoided two crashes. 
 He dodged between a GTS and GT car that had contact in the esses and then 
fought to avoid hitting a prototype car after sliding in oil from an engine 
failure in another GT car.  Borcheller had lost radio contact with his crew, so he 
mistakenly thought the second incident was a crash involving two GT cars.

"We had a relatively flawless run," he reported.  "But the last 15 minutes of 
the race, I had two situations.  One of the Prodrive cars got together with 
the J-3 car.  I was the only car that went through, between the wall and the 
Prodrive car that was stopped.  Then, on the last lap, Boris [Said] blew his 
motor and [Randy] Pobst hit his oil and went straight off.  I thought they hit 
each other.  The number one Audi almost stopped and then I hit the oil.  I came 
so close to running into the back of him!  So the last 15 minutes was very 
eventful for me."

futures

Borcheller is hard at work to finalize plans for 2004.  He is negotiating 
options in the American Le Mans Series, the Le Mans Endurance Series in Europe, 
the Rolex Sports Car Series and the Grand-Am Cup.

next

Borcheller will compete in the final 2003 Grand-Am Cup and Rolex Sports Car 
Series races, at Daytona International Speedway on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1.  He is 
leading the Daytona Prototype driver championship in the Rolex Series and is a 
close third in the Grand-Am Cup GSII class.

###

Sylvia Proudfoot
spur07@cs.com
403 287 3945