Briscoe looking for good Mid-Ohio race

By ROB HAMILTON

While the 2012 Indy­Car sea­son hasn’t gone quite the way Ryan Briscoe had envi­sioned, the Aus­tralian dri­ver is hop­ing a trip to one of his favorite courses this week­end will turn his for­tunes around.

Through 11 races, Briscoe is ninth in the Indy­Car stand­ings with only five top-10 fin­ishes. How­ever, in the four pre­vi­ous years, he has three top-10 fin­ishes at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, includ­ing a 2008 vic­tory. Indy­Car will be at the Mor­row County race track this week­end, com­pet­ing Sun­day at 1 p.m. after run­ning prac­tice and qual­i­fy­ing ses­sions the pre­vi­ous two days.

Last year was Briscoe’s worst fin­ish at Mid-Ohio, as he placed 16th due to some bad luck get­ting caught out by a yel­low flag and los­ing posi­tions. That one bad expe­ri­ence hasn’t changed his opin­ion of the track, though.

“I love Mid-Ohio,” he said. “Even last year, we were run­ning well. I love that track — it reminds me of Euro­pean tracks. These tracks have really flow­ing cor­ners. You need a lot of rhythm there. It’s just really exciting.”

Briscoe is hop­ing to repeat his past suc­cesses because, with the cur­rent par­ity in the dri­vers’ stand­ings, a strong fin­ish to the sea­son could vault him from ninth to the top five.

“It is so close,” he said of the stand­ings. “It’s been such a mixed bag. There are so many good teams and dri­vers that you can’t pre­dict who will fin­ish where. From fourth to about 15th, it’s very tight. If we can be top five after the next four races, that would be a big achieve­ment for us.”

Cur­rently, Briscoe, one of three Penske dri­vers along with Helio Cas­tron­eves and Will Power, has 241 points. Fourth-place Scott Dixon has 301, while fifth-place James Hinch­cliffe has 286.

Briscoe was one of many dri­vers to visit Mid-Ohio last Thurs­day for the track’s Indy­Car test­ing day. The dri­ver noted that with Mid-Ohio being only the sec­ond road course Indy­Car has on this sea­son, test­ing day was pretty impor­tant for him and his team.

“We have a dif­fer­ent tire we run on at Mid-Ohio, so it’s a chance to go there with this tire and eval­u­ate set-ups. From a dri­ving stand­point, we’re also with Chevy work­ing on engine tun­ing and drivability.”

One thing Briscoe loves about the Indy­Car cir­cuit is the vari­ety in courses, as dri­vers race on ovals, street courses and road courses dur­ing the course of the sea­son. He men­tioned Long Beach as a per­sonal favorite street course and Mil­wau­kee as a great oval track.

“I think it’s awe­some!” he said. “The great­est aspect of Indy rac­ing is that you can’t just be good at ovals, but have to have diversity.”

In gen­eral, though, Briscoe is most at home on road courses like Mid-Ohio, which gives him plenty of rea­sons to look for­ward to this week­end. The dri­ver said that he likes most things about the local track.

“It’s a bit of every­thing,” he said. “Going there with Penske, I’ll have a good car and strong set-up. Add to that my love for the cir­cuit and it’s an over­all good pack­age with my dri­ving style and hav­ing the right car.”

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Aug 1 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.