With race day here for the Monterey Sports Car Championships presented by Patrón at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, SPEED play-by-play host Brian Till takes around one of the most challenging circuits in the American Le Mans Series…

Perhaps it is fitting that the final event of the 2009 American Le Mans Series season will be contested on one of the most challenging circuits in North America: Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.  And the battle here will not only be for the race win; it will decide the championship in three different classes as well.

Competitors have faced a variety of track “personalities” this season.  The weathered roughness of Sebring, the street fights in St. Petersburg and Long Beach where shear will, determination and aggression can make you a hero or a zero at any moment.  The exhilarating speed of Mosport and Road Atlanta, where courage pays the biggest dividend.  The bullring of Lime Rock and the flowing beauty of Road America. 

But when it comes to technical racing venues, two stand out: Mid-Ohio and Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.  Both have smooth surfaces, low grip and elevation changes.  Both require patience behind the wheel, a smooth hand and a car that maximizes mechanical grip.  But only one has one of the most famous corner complexes in North America: the Corkscrew.  Welcome to Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.

A lap here requires a car with good mechanical grip, high aerodynamic downforce and a driver with smooth inputs.  Up the front straight and through Turn 1 (basically a slight left hand kink) brings the driver to the first of many challenges here; Turn 2 or “the hairpin” as some call it.  The approach here is the highest speed on the race track and the braking forces here in a prototype can approach three Gs.  During the race, the braking zone presents a good passing opportunity not only for the faster prototypes on the GT classes, but also for same class battles.  Ideally, the drivers will look for a single late apex here but in competition, leaving the door open in the first part of the corner can lead a following driver to attempt an “optimistic” move.  You will most likely see prototype and GT drivers in the race protecting, driving a double apex to avoid the temptation for overtaking drivers.  Perhaps one of the biggest challenges with this corner is the exit.  The surface at Laguna is polished because of the sand that surrounds the track being brought on to the surface and then basically acting as an abrasive.  In addition, any sand that remains is like fine powder, greatly reducing grip levels throughout the corners.  Good traction control settings that limit slip but still provide enough acceleration are paramount.

Next up is Turn 3, a mid speed right hand corner that is about as flat as can be; no elevation change and no camber changes.  That should make it pretty straight forward.  But the lack of grip here is incredibly frustrating for a driver.  Turn-in can be a chore and it never seems that your speed is as quick as you think it should be.  It is a momentum corner as the track won’t accept any abrupt inputs.  Smooth on the brake and smooth with the steering inputs, roll the speed through and be on with it.

Up a gear or two out of Turn 3 and now Turn 4.  In a prototype the turn-in here should be, at most, a moderate lift off the throttle.  In a GT car it may require a bit of brake.  But this is another of those corners where grip is at a minimum.  The low-apex curbing invites drivers to apex well over the inside curbing, drawing sand back up on the racing surface.  It is not at all uncommon to find a bit of understeer just past turn in (about ¼ of the way through the corner) but the downforce of a prototype should help mitigate that.  Now the challenge is to keep the momentum and speed up from the apex out so that you can have a good run to the braking zone for Turn 5. 

Turn 5 begins the run of corners that have significant elevation and camber changes.  At turn-in, the track is quite flat and at first glance it seems pretty straight forward.  Increasing elevation and positive camber past the apex gives the driver the thought that turning early here will work as the increasing elevation and camber gain will help catch the car at exit.  However, the just about the time the car reaches track out, the camber gain goes away very quickly and actually falls a bit off camber.  Tightening hands/steering at the exit is a recipe for disaster.  The cure?  A more conventional turn-in with the knowledge that grip at the exit is going to be compromised.  Because the run to Turn 6 continues uphill, it is imperative for overall lap time to get a good exit off of Turn 5.  Better to be a bit slower at turn-in and carry good speed up the hill than to get too greedy early in the corner only to pay the price by having to lift off the throttle at the exit.

More elevation and camber changes await the drivers as they approach Turn 6, a left hand corner that will take drivers up the hill to the braking zone for the famous Corkscrew.  The first challenge as you approach Turn 6 is that you can’t see the corner…any of it.  The braking is done heading up the hill but the turn-in point is at a plateau.  The difficulty here is to get the car to effectively turn at the plateau.  Even under braking the front end will lose grip as the track changes from uphill to level and then downhill.  What steering is lost at turn-in usually (in a well set-up car) comes back as the track falls away and then compresses at apex.  The beginning of the compression helps direct the car to the apex.  From this point, the hard work has been done.

Now, on up the hill past Turn 7 (a right hand kink that begins the braking zone for the Corkscrew) and prepare for the drop.  It may be difficult to see the turn-in and apex back in Turn 6 but at the Corkscrew the driver cannot even see the braking zone as he/she heads up the hill.  Start by transitioning to driver’s left after the exit of Turn 6 and then move diagonally across the track to the braking zone on the right.  It’s difficult to find the correct reference points here: too far to drivers’ right and the car is on the curbing in the braking zone and too far to drivers’ left and the car is positioned too far to the left.  And the braking is the easy part; finding the proper references for turn-in and apex is the real challenge.  Upon turning in for the first part of the corner the easiest way (a relative term) to determine the line is to aim the car across the track, outside the fence at a tree in the spectator area.  And now the fun begins.  It’s like driving off a cliff.  Once past the first apex, the driver’s line of sight comes back as he/she falls three stories; past the 2nd/right hand apex and down the hill towards Turn 9.  The Corkscrew really is one of the most challenging and exhilarating corners in North America and a great place for spectators to watch.  If you get to the track you’ll notice cars with their right front wheels off the ground just after the first apex!  Great stuff…and I know that my words can barely begin to describe what a driver experiences.  But Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca has even more in store.

As the car continues to rocket downhill, the drivers need to transition the car back towards drivers’ right to position the car for the very quick left-hand Turn 9.  It is not at all uncommon to fight the front end at turn in here as the momentum wants to push the car straight down the hill while the driver wants to coax it back to the left for the apex.  This is another place where the speeds are high and the drivers’ inputs need to be smooth and precise.  My colleague Dorsey Schroeder thinks that this is truly the most difficult corner here to get right.  And the apex here has a significant compression as well.  The Turn 9 apex compression (as well as the compressions in Turn 6 and Turn 10) require the engineers to pay attention to spring rates as well as ride height to ensure that the cars do not bottom out too much.  And that is the Laguna Seca challenge: enough spring rate to hold the car off the ground but soft enough to generate mechanical grip.

Still heading downhill drivers now face the high speed challenge of Turn 10.  On par with the cornering speeds of Turn 9, Turn 10 just seems more daunting.  Perhaps it’s that here you arrive at the corner with much more speed and acceleration than Turn 9 (where you had just exited the Corkscrew).  It could also be that the track just seems more narrow here with not a lot of margin for error.  And in a stiffly sprung prototype, the compression and bumps on the way to the apex make visibility a chore.  The car has significant grip at the compression but as the effect of the compressions diminishes at corner exit it’s not at all uncommon to lose a bit of grip.  And there really isn’t much time to fight for control at the exit here as the next thing on the agenda is heavy braking for the final corner, Turn 11.

The slowest corner on the racetrack, Turn 11, takes you to the checkered flag.  But part of the challenge here is gathering up the car in the braking zone.  Oh, and passing?  This is another place where it can be done, especially class on class.  But patience and a well set-up move are required.  On the last lap for position, anything goes.  But on a fast lap the drivers’ will look for a controlled entry with a bit of trail braking to help point the car and then focus on an early throttle application in order to generate good straight away speeds all the way to the hairpin.  Traction at corner exit here is paramount and is another place where the traction control settings will be important.

As you can see, the race track presents plenty of challenges.  But challenges are what the drivers in the American Le Mans Series have come to expect; the challenges of the world class tracks they race on and the challenges of the world class drivers they compete against.