Motorsports Marketing Update: Tenneco Automotive Grand Prix of Detroit June 16-18 2000

By: Jeff Glenn, driver of the # 73 Boise Cascade Office Products Barber Dodge Race Car

The Full Story

	Welcome to the Boise Cascade Office Products 2000 Barber Dodge Pro Series Racing effort. This is the first of five post - race updates. Things got rolling with this program in mid May, with my first test of the Barber Dodge Race car. For more details on the testing, visit the update from Sebring Florida.
	JAG Promotions put together a program with Boise Cascade Office Products, a wholly owned subsidiary of Boise Cascade Corporation, early in the year to test out the marketing value of a racing promotion with corporate hospitality in key Boise markets. Boise is joined by associate sponsors KJWL Radio Fresno, Bank of the West, and Top Shelf / Giannini Packing Corporation. Going into this weekend, I knew that it would be "trial by fire" - in that I had only driven these cars once before at the test in Sebring, I had never been to Detroit, the course was a street course (notorious for eating cars with the close proximity of the concrete barriers), and I was up against guys who for the most part have been in these cars for two or three years. Realistically my goal was to survive, not destroy the car, and have the Boise guests enjoy the event.
Detroit Photo essay by Jeff Glenn	I arrived in town on Wednesday afternoon, picked up my rental car and headed downtown. It was raining, and I found myself stuck in a traffic jam caused by a semi truck that misjudged the height of an overpass on the I-94 freeway. When I found my way downtown, I was somewhat alarmed by the fact that 90% of all the traffic lights were out, and there were police randomly distributed directing traffic at maybe 10% of those. I later realized that they were there primarily for the Tigers Game at the new Comerica Stadium downtown. I wandered around for a while, and eventually found the hotel. Once upon a time, it was in one of the best locations in the city, across the street from the now vacant Cadillac headquarters building. In fact, the Best Western was the only occupied building on the block. It turned out that the traffic light / streetlight power problem was caused by an interruption in the main service line to the city. The "People Mover", Detroit's three-mile elevated trolley that circles the city was disabled as well. Detroit was one of the most fascinating cities that I have ever visited, in terms of original architecture and empty space (probably to the tune of 70% or more vacancy.) This is a striking contrast to the current inflated real estate market in the San Francisco Bay Area. I had a chance Thursday morning to take a walk around the city, and you can see my photo essay of Detroit by clicking here.
Belle Isle	After my self-guided tour of the city and GM headquarters I headed out towards Belle Isle, the island park in the middle of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Canada. The schedule of events had us on track Friday morning and afternoon, once Saturday, and then the race after the CART race on Sunday. Thursday was an in-paddock registration day, and would allow me to take a look at the track. For a street course, the track is not terribly bumpy. After taking care of registration duties I was able to walk the track and drive it in the rental car for a few slow laps. Thursday evening I headed back, drove around town a bit and ended up in "Greektown", a one block burp of partial renovation and revitalization with multiple restaurant options. Steve Glenn, my father (and radio man / green flag spotter) arrived late Thursday night.
The Detroit Boat Club on Belle Isle	Belle Isle does not have a vast amount of parking on the island during the event, and the Barber Dodge competitors were given volunteer parking passes for a lot about a mile and a half off of the island. In theory, shuttle busses would run at five-minute increments to the parking lot. Friday morning we had a drivers meeting at 7:45am, and were on track at 8:45am. Our hotel was a valet parking-only deal, and on average it seemed to take about fifteen to twenty minutes to get the car out of the garage. My dad and I headed out to the parking lot, where there was a huge line forming for the busses. Standing at the end of the 150+ people line, I was mildly nervous about missing my first drivers meeting with the series. It was about 7:30 when a small shuttle van came to take a load of about 15 people. We decided to bail out of the line, grab the car and talk our way in without the proper parking pass. I made the meeting on time.
	Friday AM Session 1. Weather: Dry, but cloudy, under somewhat threatening skies. I went out on the baseline setup (in theory, all of the cars arrive at the track with similar settings and adjustments with regards to wings, shock adjustments, swaybar positions, and toe) to learn the track and continue learning the car. The track was pretty slick as we were only the second group on the track. I was still coming to grips with the car, which is a bit different than the Sports 2000 and Formula Ford 2000 cars I have driven in the past. Both of those cars are pretty lightweight, and don't have the heavy engine of the Barber Dodge car. For the first session, I was pretty far off the pace. I was 19th out of 26, still finding my way around, and learning the car. Immediately after the session, rain looked imminent. After looking at data (information on speed, throttle position and engine rpm collected by the car's on board computer built into the dash display unit) in between sessions, I decided to go up on the wing settings on the car, but start from the baseline and make adjustments from there.
	Friday 4:45PM Qualifying 1: Still dry - the threat of rain never materialized. The car felt a little loose on throttle. After getting a feel for things, I came in to add a little rebound to the rear shocks in order to calm the back down under acceleration. I went back out for a couple of laps, and felt that the car had developed a bit of a push. I came in again, and added a couple of clicks of low speed bump on the front shocks, but because of a crash, the session was red flagged a couple minutes before time ran out on the allotted thirty minutes. I had gone 1.4 seconds faster, but I was still looking to shave about 3 seconds to get down to the front. I felt a little like the slowest one out there, I ended up 22nd. After the session, I got the chance to take a look at more data, and realized that I was loosing significant time in the left / right transition of turn one and two. I talked with Norton Gaston, an engineer I had worked with on the Carbir project, (in Portland Oregon) and he gave me several ideas with possible combinations to try with the setup.
	Saturday June 17, 2000. Our second attempt at qualifying was 12:15pm. I decided to run more wing in the car to help the car through the high speed turn one and two area. I also kept the bump changes I had made to the shocks in the previous session. My initial impression was that the car was better- it felt better but I had created an understeering condition just after turn-in. I clicked off several laps, and dropped my time by another .7 second. A mistake while overtaking a slower car in turn three led to a quick spin. I kept it off of the walls and got going again. At this point in the session, someone else had crashed and the track was black flagged. I came in and dropped the shocks back to the baseline settings but left the wing in the car, to try and fix the understeer. Back out on track after the cleanup, the car felt slow to react with the changes I had made. I came back in, and was going to adjust the front of the car - again back up on front bump, but I would leave the rebound alone in the back. There was another crash, and time ran out before the track could be cleared. Another not-so-stellar performance - I did drop my time, but it kept me in the same spot; 22nd. After qualifying I met with the Boise Cascade Office Products guests, showed them the car, and looked at some data. Tammy Pruitt (from Boise) and I went to a "sponsorship seminar" hosted by Barber Dodge late in the afternoon. I had a couple of lengthy conversations Saturday night with Norton Gaston again on setup, and what my plan would be in case it should rain. First look out the window on Sunday morning: RAIN. The only track time scheduled for Barber Dodge on Sunday was the race, following the CART race. Sunday morning I finally found out why it took fifteen minutes to retrieve the rental car from the valets at the hotel. We were all set to go out to the track, when I handed the valet the ticket for the car, and he responded, " The elevator in the garage is broken - and there should be someone coming to repair it after 9:00." It turns out that the first four floors of the hotel were garage space, but without a ramp. There was a service elevator/lift that lifted the cars to the different floors - which were divided in two by a support wall with no doors. (I learned this when the valet and I went to the wrong side looking for the car, and had to cross the hotel on a lower floor to get to the other side of the garage from an access door on the opposite side of the hotel.) This would have been more alarming had Tammy Pruitt from Boise not been at our hotel with her car parked outside. We made it out to the track, where the dirt access roads had turned to a soupy paste with the rain and foot traffic. I was working on finalizing my setup changes to the car before the race, while the Boise guests took in the CART event from the stands. I caught the start of the CART event with my girlfriend, Christine, and my dad from along the straight between turn two and three, and returned to the Barber Dodge paddock. After the CART race was in the books, and Sylvester Stallone shot a fictitious victory stand sequence complete with fireworks for his upcoming movie "Champs" about CART racing, we were on the grid and ready to go for our 40 minute race.
	The RACE: The weather had cleared, and it was sunny and warm. After two pace laps, the field approached the flag, and with my stellar qualifying position, I heard my dad on the radio calling the green before I could physically see the flag. There was a crash ahead of me in the middle of the pack before we crossed the line. I think it was Michael Valiante from Vancouver B.C. who ended up backwards before the start line. Considering these circumstances, I got a pretty good start in - I threaded my way through the mess and got a good run down the straightaway up to turn three, and got by a couple of cars. The track went yellow for cleanup, and I was sitting somewhere around 18th. When we returned to green, I got a good jump on the car ahead of me, and moved outside down the straight after turns one and two. As I pulled alongside Jay Ricci (#22) I was blocked - into the wall. To avoid contact with the wall and the other car I had to brake, and I went to the other side, only to be blocked again. In the meantime, while the blocking /swerving festival was in full swing, two cars drafted past into the turn three corner. I expressed my displeasure with the car ahead to my dad on the radio. The rest of the race was pretty uneventful. I had a short battle with John McCaig, who ended up in front of me. I had started the race with the front swaybar set in the middle of the adjustment range, then when the car started to feel a bit loose I went stiffer on the bar and it helped balance it out. The car felt better than it had all weekend (I went another .4 second better), but I was still learning the car, trying to remember that I didn't have to lift out of the throttle to upshift, and things of that nature. I still have a ways to go before I am really comfortable with the car - a street course is simply not the best place to explore the outer limits of handling. A slight miscalculation usually leads to contact with a concrete barrier. When all was said and done, I had gone from 22nd to 16th, kept the car in one piece, and continued to learn the car. Turn One of the Barber Dodge Race
	After the race, I met up with the Boise Cascade Office Products guests after the victory stand ceremony. (The series allowed Boise employees to hand out the awards- which went over pretty well.) From a marketing standpoint, for our first event, I think things went very well. The guests seemed to enjoy the event, and were able to see racing at the highest level, as well as a new perspective on the "other" events that make up the ladder that drivers, teams, mechanics, and promotional specialists all climb in trying to reach the top of the sport.
	We left Detroit early on Monday morning; unfortunately several of my bags didn't make it home on the same flight. It took an extra day and a half to get several pieces of my checked luggage which visited Saint Louis for an extra day. The next event is the Marconi Grand Prix of Cleveland Presented by Firstar June 30/ July 1 at Cleveland's Burke Lakefront Airport. Jeff Glenn

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