Southern Floridas Homestead Miami International Speedway hosted the third round of the 2007 Grand American Rolex Sports Car Series presented by Crown Royal Reserves on Saturday, March 24th. Both the #57 and #97 Stevenson Motorsports Corvettes were in the race looking for a GT class podium finish, but sometimes getting what you wants comes down to how you handle things. And for this round, the team just could not seem to get the cars to handle like potential winners should.
The #57 Crawford Race Cars built Corvette finished in 12th place with the #97 Riggins Engineering built car right behind in 13th spot. Both cars ran the race at an average of 81 miles per hour, just one mile per hour less than the class winning Mazda, albeit one lap behind at the end.
Vic Rice and Tommy Riggins shared the driving chores in the #97 car and Rice made it clear the car just wasnt set up where it needed to be as there was little harmony between the chassis, the tires, and the track configuration.
The Hoosier tires had good initial grip but couldn’t last a full fuel stint without significant degradation. We tried to manage as best we could but the car became progressively loose after as little as 20 minutes. All in all we ran a compromised setup anticipating tire wear in hopes that others would suffer as badly - or worse - than we did late in a stint.
Team Crew Chief Mike Johnsons frustration over not being able to get the cars set up just right came through clearly when he said, All weekend we fought some pretty difficult oversteer that we just couldn’t overcome. We made every change possible, but we just couldn’t get the car to handle the way we wanted, and we finished 12th. Not much more to say than that. “
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