Catching up with the Races

The pits at Villeneuve Race Track

After missing two very promising race weekends, I decided to catch up with Duncan Murdoch and ask him how he felt about his performance and his car. He came third in Tremblant at the end of May and he finished one of the races at the Montreal Grand Prix. He also had a fire in his car during the Saturday race. Here is what he had to say! 

 Duncan: Our podium at Tremblant was very satisfying because we worked very hard at refining all the small little things we knew were wrong with the car and we found a few other little things so it our performance was a combination of attention to detail and all the work we did over the wintertime, optimizing everything to the greatest extent and we did a couple of test days before the beginning of the season. It didn't appear that anyone else was there so we did our homework and things worked out very well and it paid off. Shows that the hard work pays off and good results and I felt that over the past two seasons, we could do very well and it took longer than I expected. 

 Me: What is your technique or routine when you prepare the engine and the car during the summer. Where do you do it, how and how much time do you devote to it?

 Duncan: Generally, for the engine, I rebuilt it during the winter, mostly by myself but with a little help from friends that are in the crew. The engine is in my best friend's garage and when I need a hand the helping hand is always there, but mostly I concentrate on it by myself and put a lot of attention to detail. The chassis I keep that very close to home and couple of other crew members come over a couple of times a week and we basically take everything apart, clean it, put it back together and make sure the alignment is close to perfect as possible and this year we had done an upgrade. We did it last year but some of the parts were not available to do things to the level of perfection I guess you woud say that we would have liked to have done but over this winter, we concentrated on the things that we had done wrong cuz we hadn't paid enough attention to detail and we corrected that and the result was the podium performance at Tremblant. 

 Me: How did you feel about going to Tremblant with these new upgrades? Were you excited or afraid it might not work out or be disappointed? How did that affect your weekend? I was pretty confident the car was the best it could be and from the moment I got in the car and when we did our test days it seemed very good and when you are on the track by yourself testing you don't have any basis of comparison, so you don't really know for sure, but I was confident we would do well. Me: How did it feel being qualifying second? 

 Duncan: It was great. Me: How did it feel coming in third? Did you know you were in third or were you focused on finishing the race and the car? Were you excited to know that you would be on the podium? Duncan: Well, yes I did know I was in third. We had lost touch, I was fighting with another racer at the time and I had spun and I knew I had dropped a bit from the leaders and I knew I wouldn't be able to catch them, but Nathan spun off and I knew another racer was ahead of me. I wasn't able to challenge for second at that point because there was too much of a gap, so third was it. 

 Me: When you were on the podium, did you get sprayed with champagne? What is your podium etiquette regarding champagne? 

 Duncan: Well, by that point it was a Sunday podium ceremony and I was in my street clothes, so I was conservative in the spraying of the champagne. Showers were not available and we had the long ride home. There was a truce between the three of us to spray into the air and then we shared the champagne from the cup with our pit crews. Me: You just did the Grand Prix and it was a very exciting time, especially with the fire. Can you tell us a little bit about how you felt when you came into the pits? Did you think you had a penalty? Duncan: I had thought, cuz I hit a racer lightly from the back with the nose of the car, which didn't affect anyone in the race. I thought the signal that I had gotten a mechanical failure was due to damage to the front nose, which you can't see when you are sitting in the car. I was surprised to find out that it was the result of a fire. I was very happy with what we had done in the race so far and I'm happier with the Saturday performance because we were so competitive and if we had finished we would have been fifth. It's very promising going into Tremblant which is a track that I feel is much more challenging and is much more adventitious to my style of driving and we'll see what happens!