MOUNT MORRIS, MICH. - Round Seven of the 2014 Pro Mazda Championship Presented by Cooper Tires took place at the 5/8-mile banked Lucas Oil Raceway in Brownsburg, Ind., on Saturday night May 24 as part of the traditional curtain-raiser to the following day's Indianapolis 500.
The annual "Night Before The 500‟ event was the first of two oval races on the 2014 Pro Mazda schedule. The event kicked off with a promoter test day on Friday before the official practice, qualifying and race which all took place on Saturday afternoon and evening. Michael was on the pace immediately in Friday's test sessions, which saw him posting the ninth quickest time in session one, before improving his time in the second session to P8. The 21-year-old from Michigan finished the third practice session with a season's best performance of fourth fastest with a lap of 20.597, just 0.2862 off P1.
Johnson summed up the test day on Friday before the official sessions would start the following day: "Friday was definitely a good day, we could run all day without any trouble and we constantly improved the car. The final test session on Friday was a 'night' practice in preparation for Saturday's race which also would take place about the same time in the evening so that the car worked really well under those conditions I was really optimistic for Saturday."
Saturday's practice sessions took place under much warmer conditions with the track becoming much more greasy especially in the second session. Michael posted the seventh quickest time in the first session and ended up in 10th place in the final practice before qualifying.
"Our car was better when it was cooler. I got a lot of push and as we tried to work on that the back just became much too twitchy to push it harder. With qualifying just three hours after the final practice, the last thing you want is to end up repairing the car because you overdid it. Plus I knew that the race would take place in the evening and we had a really good car in those conditions so we just needed to see what we can make happen for the single car qualifying that afternoon," Michael explained.
Qualifying did not work out in Michael's favor as he was picked to be the first driver to go out for the two-lap single-car qualifying run. "Nobody wants to go out first for qualifying, but it is what it is. Usually when the conditions don't change the track always gets quicker towards the end so going out first for sure wasn't what I wanted, especially after knowing that we had the speed to probably qualify in the top six. So that we ended up 10th was a little bit disappointing after the strong run we had the day before. I think I was a little bit too conservative on the out lap towards the green flag which costs me some time in the first out of the two laps combined for qualifying," said Michael.
Saturday evening's 90-lap race would provide plenty of track time and race pace to help improve Michael's position. The race ran without a full-course caution and after losing a position to his teammate, Ryan Booth, at the start he was able to finish in the 11th position.
Michael summed up the race at Lucas Oil Raceway: "Ryan got me there at the start and each time I had a run on him we were hitting lapped traffic. Those Pro Mazda cars are much more sensitive with the bigger wings and more downforce than the 2.0-liter cars I raced last year so you lose much more front grip when you run close behind a other car and it's really hard to pass someone, especially if they run a similar speed than you do. Towards the end we both caught the cars running ahead of us and I was running similar times to the leaders but it still would have been very hard to pass them."
Michael gained several points in the Pro Mazda Championship chase and he is currently only 13 points away from the top 10.
Michael and his JDC MotorSports team now head to the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, Ohio on June 4-5 for an official test before heading to the Grand Prix of Houston for the eighth and ninth rounds of the 2014 Pro Mazda Championship Presented by Cooper Tires which takes place on June 27-29
About Michael Johnson:
Twenty-one-year-old racer Michael Johnson is the first and only paralyzed licensed INDYCAR driver. Johnson was on his way to becoming a professional motorcycle racer, having won races and championships at regional and national levels, when, on August 13, 2005 he was involved in an on-track racing accident which left him paralyzed from the mid-chest down. After several years of recovery he has started racing and winning again and now has set his goal to become the first paralyzed driver to compete in the Indianapolis 500. Johnson drives his specially modified race car with hand controls and he became the first paralyzed racer to win in an open-wheel formula car during Round Two of the Skip Barber Summer Series at Watkins Glen International Raceway in 2011. He went on to claim two further victories at Road America, and finished the 2011 season with three wins, one pole position, four third-place podiums and several top-five finishes. In 2012 Johnson moved up to the Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship Powered by Mazda - Step One of the “Mazda Road to Indy” program - with championship winning team JDC MotorSports. In his first year as a professional licensed INDYCAR driver Johnson had several top-10 finishing positions in qualifying and races on his way to 15th position overall in the series. Johnson is once again competing with JDC MotorSports in the 2014 Pro Mazda Championship Presented by Cooper Tires.