Road Atlanta AER Feb 2019

Another fun race in the books! We had a few challenges to overcome but still got a podium spot thanks to a great crew and roster of drivers!

Friday:

The morning allowed practice and the afternoon was qualifying. We used the morning session for me to tune the car, considering it had a new suspension...these improvement resulted in significant improvements to the feel of the car, and its balance, making us 4-5 seconds faster, per lap.

Friday afternoon was dedicated to getting the other 5 drivers seat time to get familiar with both the car and track as well as qualifying for the race.

With qualifying under our belt, we saw that the class we were placed in got faster than expected, so we switched a better set of tires and different rear end that would allow us to power out of the corners faster.

Saturday:

The start of the race brought rain and slippery conditions, but the drivers did a great job keeping it on track. However, the challenging conditions encouraged a competitor to push too hard in turn 3, spinning out and hitting our car! This resulted in a lot of lost time, having to replace control arms, fuel tank and quickly aligning the vehicle. We also had a damaged wheel for our grippy tires and had to switch back to the lower grip tires for the remainder of the day. We were able to get back on track and turn enough laps to get points and even gain a position, while making sure the vehicle was good for the final race on Sunday.

Sunday:

We had to change our strategy for Sundays endurance race, considering the usual 9 hour race had a 2 hour "quiet time". We were able to cycle through a few drivers early on, who did a great job improving our position and preparing us for the afternoon. Nevermind the constant change in conditions with cold weather and occasional rain. With the car running strong and moving up in the field, our rain light began to malfunction and despite best efforts to reset it, we had to make two extra pit stops to fix it, resulting in a total of 3 laps lost. After getting back on track we were able to make it back up to third place before the race was called 30 minutes short due to unsafe race conditions. We are happy with a 3rd place podium finish, but 1st place was 3 laps away and would have made for a great race if we hadn't needed to pit two extra times.

Looking towards the next race, the vehicle is going to get a few updates to make it faster and more robust. Speaking of the next race, hoping to make it out to Watkins Glen for another great time and podium finish :)