The heat was intense over the weekend and so was the competition, as teams took to the beautiful landscape of the Kettle Moraines in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin for the 10th round of the 2007 Champ Car World Series Championship.
The weekend started out rocky for Forsythe Championship Racing as both Oriol Servia and teammate Paul Tracy experienced difficulty with car setup. The first round of qualifying Friday afternoon saw Servia and Tracy land 10th and 15th on the charts, respectively. Though the team worked hard to get the correct setup for Saturday’s sessions, gremlins struck again as an engine malfunction sidelined Servia for the entire second qualifying, preventing him from turning a full lap.
Despite starting 14th on the grid, Servia persevered come race time and quickly eliminated his competition as he worked his way to the front of the field. An early pit stop played into the team’s strategy and Servia found himself running in the top-five for most of the race. He just didn’t have enough to take rookie Graham Rahal at the end, and ended up one place off the podium in fourth.
Oriol undoubtedly took the hard-charger award for the race, picking up 10 positions on his way to the checkers. What a result after a difficult weekend!
Posted by Shelly Paul, Servia Squad Feature Writer