Sebring: Genoa Racing Wednesday notes

Genoa Racing Back on Track Wednesday As Preparation Continues For Saturday's Twelve Hours of Sebring; Team Fastest in Class in Practice Wed.

SEBRING, Fla., March 17 - Genoa Racing was back in action Wednesday at Sebring International Raceway after missing Tuesday's practice sessions to make repairs to its bright-red LMPC car, No. 36. At the end of the day it was on top of the class standings.

The car's tub was damaged in an accident around noon on Monday when Tom Sutherland spun and hit a guardrail off Turn 7 as the Zionsville, Ind.-based team prepared for Saturday's Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring presented by Fresh from Florida.

Sutherland was not hurt in the incident, but the car's tub did not hold up as well as expected. Chris Oldham, who handles the composites work for the team, was busy all day Tuesday making repairs to the tub using a product supplied by one of the team's technical partners, Zyvex Performance Materials.

"In layman's terms, it's a structural adhesive for carbon fiber," said Oldham as he applied the product to a carbon-fiber panel in Genoa Racing's paddock inside the 3.7-mile, 17-turn road course in Sebring, Fla.

Zyvex Performance Materials, which is based in Columbus, Ohio, was the first company to provide nano-enhanced products to the marketplace. Carbon nanotubes are among the strongest materials on earth, with a strength about 100 times that of steel at one-sixth the weight. Besides Genoa Racing's LMPC car, the company's products are used on everything from high-performance powerboats and fighter jets to baseball bats.

The LMPC category is a new class in the American Le Mans Series this year, and all of the cars in it are brand-new.

"The tub should have held up better than it did in that incident, but the supplier responded well to the problem and worked with us to minimize the track time we lost," said Thomas Knapp, the team's manager.

All three of the team's drivers - Sutherland, Andy Wallace and J.R. Hildebrand - turned practice laps on Wednesday afternoon and at the end of the day the entry topped the class standings.

-source: genoa racing