Season Finale - PittRace 2019

Well this has been an interesting year, full of ups and downs, but overall growth and success! We managed to finish 3rd in the series (of around 150 teams) for the whole year and we are already making plans to improve for next year.

Onto the race weekend....Friday was our normal practice and qualifying. As we typically do, I got the vehicle setup in the morning before we started to shuffle a few drivers in the vehicle, as most of us had only been here once, or not at all. Of course, the drivers all got acclimated to the vehicle quickly and were putting down competitive times during qualifying. However, Friday night, we went through some data analysis on each driver to further our competitive edge.

Saturday - Race

We decided to switch our driver lineup a little bit, to help strengthen our "core" drivers in prep for next season and it worked great. We had a very clean start of the race and slowly started working out way to the front of the field. Halfway through the day, we noticed this track seemed to be a little more abusive on tires than we had expected, so we had to start pacing the vehicle to conserve the tires. Though in the end, we still had to replace one tire for the last stint of the day. Luckily, we had executed multiple yellow flag pit stops/driver changes that gave us an advantage over the competition. With a solid strategy, group of drivers and a little luck we managed to pull off a win, by a small margin!

Sunday - Race

Using what we had learned from the Saturday race, we modified the setup to help conserve the tires. The message of the day to the drivers to was "conserve, but stay competitive". Once again, we had a great start and worked our way forward through out the day. Most of the other teams were being more cautious than usual also, resulting in fewer yellows, that prevented us from having a strategic advantage, so we had to start pushing a little extra. With the extra pace we knew we risked another tire change at the end, but it started to pay off as we moved up in the field. Until....towards the end of the day, we had a parts (damper) failure that took us out of the race for ~1.5 hours. Through team effort and solid preparation, we were able to get back on track for the last hour, allowing all of our drivers to get seat time and take the checker flag!

Summary:

With a strong finish on Saturday, and attrition for Sunday, we still ended up with a 2nd place finish overall for the weekend which gave us just enough points (1 more than needed) to secure a 3rd place overall, for the entire season and series! This was a very solid accomplishment considering the development and challenges we have had throughout the year and one we will certainly take pride in.

We look forward to 2020, with clear direction on improving ourselves even further. With the skill and motivation of the entire team, we are expecting another solid podium finish for next season too!