Montreal: Memo Gidley race report

Doran Racing Finishes 9th and 11th in Montreal

The two-car Doran Racing team added to its recent string of successes with one top-10 and and a near-miss 11th in Round 11 of the 2008 Rolex Series at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal. The #47 Doran Racing / CDOC / Brach's Candy Dallara Ford co-driven by Burt Frisselle and Ricky Taylor qualified 8th and finished 9th, while the #77 Doran Racing / Kodak Doran Dallara Ford with Memo Gidley and Brad Jaeger at the controls qualified 17th and finished 11th.

This brings the team's top-10 finish count to eight so far this season, including the last five races in a row; Watkins Glen, Mid-Ohio, Daytona, Barber Motorsports Park and Montreal. In addition to 9th at Montreal, the #47 car was 9th in its debut race at Mexico City, 8th at VIR, 7th at Mid-Ohio and 5th at Barber. While finishing just out of the top-10 in Montreal, the #77 car has recorded finishes of 7th in Mexico City, 5th at Watkins Glen and 6th Daytona.

"The Doran team did a great job to give Ricky and I a competitive car for the race, and we're really pleased to be able to score a top-10 finish for CDOC and our new sponsor, Brach's Candy," says Frisselle. "Consistently finishing in the top-10 is a real achievement in a series as competitive as this, and I feel like we keep getting better every race. I can hardly wait to get back to Watkins Glen next weekend, which is a track we know well and where the team has had good results."

Frisselle has been racing Daytona Prototypes in the Rolex Series since 2004, including a podium finish in his first-ever start in the series. He has scored top-10 and top-5 finishes in each of his four seasons of Rolex competition, including a 5th in his first run in the Rolex 24, in 2007. Ricky Taylor is the 19 year-old son of Rolex Series champion Wayne Taylor and, when not in a race car, attends Lake Highland Preparatory School in Orlando, Florida, where he plays on the varsity soccer team. In 2007, Taylor finished second in Skip Barber National Championship with two wins, five poles and five podiums. He won the Skip Barber Southern Series in 2006 with six wins, three poles and 12 podiums.

"I'm a bit disappointed with myself for making some mistakes and costing us some track positions during the race," said Taylor. "The car itself was great, the best we've had all season right off the truck, so that gives us all confidence for the upcoming races. Like any track, finding that last one second of lap time at Montreal is a challenge, but I really enjoyed running at a track that I've been watching F1 races on for so many years."

The #77 Doran Racing entry is co-driven by Memo Gidley and Brad Jaeger. Gidley, the very talented and widely respected American driver who was born in La Paz, Mexico and now makes his home in Novato, California, has made a name for himself as one of the most committed drivers in the paddock, driving and winning in everything from karts to Indy Cars and stock cars to prototypes.

"The Doran team didn't race at Montreal last year, so we started out a bit behind everyone else in not having a good setup to roll off the truck with," says Gidley, whose last race at Montreal was more than a decade ago with the Lynx Racing Atlantic team. "The practice sessions shortened due to rain were another factor, but the Doran team kept working and we made some good gains with the car by the time the green flag dropped. It was just one of those weekends where things didn't quite come together, but it's the mark of a truly professional team to keep working and achieve the best results possible under the circumstances. The next race is at Watkins Glen, where we scored a top-5 finish last time we ran, and we were fast in testing there on the Monday after the race, so I think we're in for a good weekend at The Glen."

Gidley's co-driver is Brad Jaeger, a recent graduate of Vanderbilt University where he was a member of their Formula SAE team, has a racing resume that includes karting, Sports 2000, Skip Barber, F2000, Star Mazda and the Indy Pro Series.

"We struggled with the car all weekend and the Doran team did a really good job of solving most of our issues and I'm reasonably happy with an 11th-place finish," says Jaeger. "We started out with trouble over the bumps, Montreal is a surprisingly bumpy track in some places, but our big issue in the race was understeer and we couldn't get into the chicanes with enough speed. Still, threre was a lot of good, hard racing, and we had a fuel strategy that let us go the distance which some cars couldn't do. The job was to keep the car on the lead lap and in one piece, and we accomplished that."

-credit: www.memogidley.com