ATLANTIC: Lynx - Long Beach: The Rain King
8 April 1998
With Rookie Buddy Rice On The Pole And Teammate Memo Gidley Alongside, It Was An All-Lynx Front Row In The KOOL/Toyota Atlantic Season Opener at Long Beach... And After A Wet Race With Six Yellow Flags And Six Re-Starts, Gidley Starts The Season Off With A Win... If The Theme Song For The Weekend Started Out As "Tangled Up In New", It Finished As "The Rain King"...
Long Beach, California -- Lynx Racing drivers Buddy Rice and Memo Gidley overcame a lack of testing and a rain-soaked racetrack to kick off the team's 1998 KOOL/ Toyota Atlantic Championship campaign with a most spectacular performance; rookie Rice on the pole, an all-Lynx front row and Gidley atop the podium in the series' April 4 season-opener at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach.
"Racing on a street circuit in the rain is about the most intense experience you can imagine," said Gidley, who won twice last year in his rookie season with Lynx and finished second in the championship. "Fortunately the team gave me a great wet-track setup and we had the advantage of starting from the front row so we could see where we were going while everybody else was blind from the spray. On top of that, Yokohama didn't have any rain tires at the event, so we were running on hand-grooved dry tires and it was all so slippery that you had to be really careful with the throttle and steering. Long Beach is one of the few tracks on the circuit where Lynx Racing hadn't won, so I was glad to break that jinx and to start the season with a show of strength."
If Lynx Racing's season started strongly, the weekend itself had a somewhat inauspicious beginning, as, for that matter, did the 1997 running of this same event. Just a few laps into the first scheduled 30-minute practice session on Friday morning, a multi-car crash requiring extensive cleanup ended the session... and left everyone to contemplate the specter of a 34-car field, 13 of them rookies, going out to qualify later that afternoon with only three laps in the rain to familiarize themselves with this tricky and dangerous racetrack.
"There really wasn't much I could do but suck it up and focus on going as fast as possible while keeping it off the walls,' said Rice. 'This was my first Atlantic race, but I ran for Lynx in F2000 last year, so I knew they'd give me a good car. When it came time to qualify, it looked like it was going to rain any minute, so they told me to push it as hard as I could in the first couple of laps and sure enough, after three laps it started to pour and Memo and I had the front row. And it rained again during final qualifying Saturday morning, so I got to start my first Atlantic race from the pole. It was an education, that's for sure."
Adding to the drama of the weekend, from the mechanic's standpoint anyway, Rice's engine failed in the final qualifying session at noon on Saturday, and since it appeared it would rain during the race, they had just four hours to change the motor, convert both cars to a 'wet' suspension setup and get them lined up on the 'dummy' grid... a feat they managed with minutes to spare.
Fortunately the Lynx drivers were ready and waiting when the next little bit of chaos struck; without benefit of the usual five-minute countdown, the field of cars was waved out onto the track to line up for the traditional Atlantic standing start and a number of drivers were left scrambling to climb into their cars and get their seat belts fastened.
Finally, the green flag dropped at 4:00 p.m. to start the 38-lap race and it was Buddy Rice who led the field through the first turn. On the sixth lap, Gidley dove inside Rice at turn six, forcing the rookie to decide between taking out his teammate and taking the escape road, which he prudently chose to do. He re-joined the fray at the back of the pack and worked his way back up to eighth before being involved in a late-race tangle with another car that saw both off the track. Rice was credited with a 14th-place finish and scored three points in the championship battle.
Gidley led laps seven through 38, engaged in a race-long battle with Atlantic rookie (though he ran a full season of Indy Lights in 1997) Andrew Bordin. The race was chopped into short 3-4 lap segments of racing interspersed with six full-course yellow flag situations with the result that, as Gidley says, "...I'm now a certified expert at re-starts on wet street circuits."
Gidley earned the winner's share of $20,000 of the $85,000 race purse. Bordin, a Canadian from Woodbridge, Ontario finished second and Andrea Delorenzi, of Ravenna, Italy, finished third.
The Long Beach season-opener will be broadcast on ESPN2 on Saturday, April 11, from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. EST. Round two of the 13-race KOOL/Toyota Atlantic Championship will run Saturday, April 25, on the super-fast 1.0-mile tri-oval at Nazareth, Pennsylvania.
For further information on Lynx Racing or drivers Memo Gidley and Buddy Rice, visit the teams web site at www.LynxRacing.com or telephone Lynx Racing Public Relations Manager Peter Frey at (818) 909-0985.