RODRIGO IMPROTA DA SILVA: Road America Debrief

Last race at Road America was probably one of the most gratifying for our team in our short endurance history. After leaving Laguna Seca with a podium chance wasted in the last hour of race, we knew that Road America could bring us some surprise. However, at this time we couldn’t expect anything big since it was the first race at Road America for both Jefferson and myself, extremely opposite of the prior race.

The cold weather was the first challenge of the week, we know that it is the same for everyone but we struggled a lot to deal with it at the first practices. Jefferson worked with some setups some days before that were virtually thrown away when faced with the real track conditions. Only after the FP2 we were feeling a little bit comfortable with the car and the “new track”. Not satisfied yet, at Saturday morning, my teammate did some crucial changes to the car that made us gain at least half a second/lap to our long run setup.

In qualifying fortunately I made my best lap of the weekend to put us 5th on the starting grid. Our strategy was made to save the car, get out of trouble for the first 5 hours, and see what the race brought us at the end. In a 6 hours race with a pace a little slower than most of the grid we didn’t see any different mindset possible.

In the first minutes we dropped to the back of the grid, and spent the first hours of the race there. After some yellow flags and some crashes we started to climb the grid, even lead the race for 2 laps during a pit stop window. With something near 2 hours left, the last caution came and put us in 3rd, one lap ahead the 4th. What a miraculous yellow flag! Knowing our difference of pace to the leaders, the only thing left was to bring the car home and hope for green flag until the end.

Finishing in third was a grateful achievement in a qualified grid such as DGFX. With this result we jumped from 6th to 4th in the championship standings and we gained an extra motivation boost for the next race at COTA.

Talking about the next race, it’s another new track for us, new challenges and the only guarantee that we have is another fun weekend! Let’s move on to the last race of the championship guys!