A Lap of Mosport International Raceway With Hans Stuck
AUGUST
10, 2001
NOTE: The American Le Mans Series will make its only appearance of the
2001 season in Canada with the running of the GT3 Grand Prix at Mosport on
Sunday, August 19, at Mosport International Raceway in Bowmanville,
Ontario. Legendary road racing star Hans Stuck will compete in the event
in the BMW Team PTG BMW M3 GTR, returning to a racing circuit that has
been kind to him in the past. Stuck set the overall track record for the
2.45-mile circuit of 1:09.775 in a Porsche 962C in August of 1985, a mark
that stood for 15 years until it was broken last year by Frank Biela in an
Audi R8. In this narrative, Stuck describes how he drives a lap around
Mosport.
A Lap of Mosport
By Hans Stuck
With its long sweeping corners and its up hills and down hills Mosport is
a track that requires a rhythm to your driving. This is one of the
very few tracks that we still race on that has not been destroyed by
chicanes to bring the speed down.
Turn 1 is a very fast down-hill right-hander and you must be precise here
because if you miss the apex there is a very good chance that you will be
history at the end of the corner and just at the exit is a bump that you
should never hit sideways.
After your adrenaline comes down maybe ten percent you come to the most
critical part of the track - the very fast, fourth gear downhill left-hand
turn two that you turn into seeing only the sky ahead of you.
Although the apex is blind you must be precise as you carry a tremendous
amount of speed here. The runoff area has been widened here as there
used to be a wall very close to the outside of the line.
For the right hand turn 3 you have to brake down hard to third gear for
another blind apex.
The right line for sweeping left-hand turn 4 is to stay on the inside and
upon entering the slower right hand turn 5 you must be careful to hit your
braking point and not flat spot your unweighted front tire.
The next right hand turn 5b is the slowest corner of the track - a first
gear corner - not much grip and it is a good place to spin the car.
You must be careful of the curbs at the exit because this corner leads
onto the long back straight where you reach top speed in sixth gear.
Any mph you are missing here will double at the top of the hill. The
straight is a good place for overtaking and being overtaken. The
slower class cars stay on the right and the prototypes stay on the left.
The back straight incorporates turns 6 and 7, but these turns are
essentially part of the flat-out run through the woods.
Turn 8 is a very fast right-hander and in all my career I have never found
the latest braking point. When you brake, shift down and reach the
apex it always seems that you could have been on the brakes later, but
when I have tried to brake later it was sometimes too late. There is
a small margin here for being right on or right off.
You shift down to third for turn 9 - an easy left-hand corner - but the
line is important because you must be on the left side of the track to
set-up for the final turn.
Turn 10 is an off-camber right-hander so the car tends to oversteer here
and unless the car has the best set-up you cannot get full power down at
exit for the trip down the pit straight.
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MEDIA CONTACT: Andy Hall, American Le Mans Series Director of Media &
Communications (317) 295-3500, ext. 31.