After a six week break the cars and teams of the ALMS returned to do battle in the 6th round of the championship at the beautiful but tricky Lime Rock Park race track situated in the rolling countryside of Conecticut. Ben was looking forward to getting back in the car and continuing the development towards being competitve with the front runners in LMP2.

Tuesday gave the team an unusual opportunity to get in some valuable track time and with Kumho present with several new compounds and contuctions everyone was in an optomistic mood.

Ben tried several compounds and was happy that the second one he tried gave a considerable improvement over previous tyres. Happy with the tyres he then worked hard to set up the car on what is, probably the trickiest circuit in the championship. At the end of the day, he and the team were satisfied that a huge leap forward had been achieved with the level of grip.

Thursday saw the start of official proceedings with the teams having 2 x 1 hour sessions followed by qualifying. It was decided Jamie would run the first hour and Ben would do the second. It was dry for the first session and Jamie did a good job slowly bringing down his lap times as he became more familiar with the circuit and ending the session in a creditable 10 place overall.

Unfortunately before the second session arrived, the heavens opened and the circuit was subjected to something approaching a tropical storm. The officials decided to cancel qualifying long before the second session was due to start and the grid positions where to be based upon the morning test times. This placed the B-K Mazda 10 on the grid which was slightly unfortunate, as their Tuesday test times would have seen them 3rd on the grid. However as the rain started to subside the afternoon session made a belated start. Ben was first in the car and as the track was stilll wet, used the few laps to try and establish a wet set up. Jamie was also given some wet laps but the track soon dried in the emerging sunshine so Ben was put back in the car and proceeded to work on balance and set up for the race. At one point he was 2nd fastest overall. With qualifying cancelled it was just left to the team to prep the car for race day.

Saturday, race day, and the sun was shining with a temperature in the 80's.

The morning warm up saw both Ben and Jamie take turns in the car and both happy with the set up.

The team made the decision to let Jamie start, which seemed fair considering he only got one lap at Utah in the previous round before mechanical problems ended their race.

He got a good clean start and maintained position despite the mayhem expected on the narrow track. He was struggling with front end grip and by the time the team made the decision to do a driver change the number 8 car was 3 laps down. Ben took over driving duties and proceeded to maintain his position and even managed to claw back a lap on 2 of the other LMP2 cars. In what was an eventfull race punctuated with yellow flags the B-K Mazda was able to run strongly against the opposition with Ben showing the potential of the package. After several full couse yellows and about 15 minutes to go Ben was following the Accura of Brian Herta around the outside of turn 3 when he was tapped by the no 73 Tafel Porsche. The contact just edged Ben onto the grass and due to the heavy rain of the previous day there was no way he could get the car manouvered out of trouble, once in the muddy undergrowth he was stuck fast and that was, unfortunately, the end of the day for the no8 car. On such a tight and narrow circuit contact is almost inevitable with the faster LMP cars constantly lapping the GT cars so Ben did not attach any blame to the no73 car.

It was" very disappointing to be out in that manner especially as we where running so strongly with the rest of the LMP cars but it was not intentional and he was (the no73) involved in his own battle so it was really just a racing accident".

So despite not finishing, there where a lot of positives to take into the next round, with the Kumhos showing a big improvement and the engine re-mapping(carried out at the recent test) making a big difference in the delivery of the power from the Mazda ZX-R 2litre turbo unit.

Next round is at Mid-Ohio on the 21st July.