CHAMBLISS: Road America Debrief

Round four of the DGFX West Series was a cold, blustery day in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin at the famed Road America circuit where flat out speed dominates. Those who chose to run a low downforce setup would be fast in practice and qualifying, but this event was 6 hours long and on a very cold track.

vApex Group entered three cars for this event, two Corvette C7 Prototypes and one Audi R8 GT3. Unfortunately, our 3rd C7 Prototype team, Team Blue, was unable to make the grid due to mechanical troubles. This allowed Russell Klaesson, a Team Blue driver, to lend his driving skills to Team Yellow for this 6 hour event. Our Team Yellow driver lineup consisted of Chuck Chambliss, Kevin Linden and Russell Klaesson.

Coming into this race, vApex Team Yellow sat 3rd place in the West Season points, just 21 points behind the leader. There was optimism for gaining some points after this longer endurance race. Chuck Chambliss qualified the car in P7, with vApex Team Green driver Mikey Grems starting from P4. Chuck’s approach for qualifying was to be

conservative and have room to avoid any early race fireworks.

The race plan was to have Chuck run the first three stints, Kevin the middle two stints, and Russell would clean up with the final two stints. And, this is exactly how our race plan unfolded…with a few unexpected issues.

The first full course caution came out on lap 13, about 25 minutes into the race. vApex Team Yellow had slowly made its way from P9 to P6. We decided to only take fuel during the pit stop under yellow, considering we only had a half stint on tires. Once we exited pit road we found ourselves P2 in class, behind another Prototype and GTD car that didn’t pit. We were a bit surprised that we passed that many cars on pit road, and was not expecting it. Chuck knew the restart was going to be a bit hairy, and it certainly delivered. Coming to the green Chuck saw the leader gaining space on the GTD car in 2nd . He thought the GTD car was slowing down, but it turns out the leading Prototype car went a bit early. This caused the cars behind me to get a little antsy and when the green came out disaster was just a few feet in down the track. The other C7 cars behind Chuck were able to get a much better jump on the green and the cars fanned out immediately. Seeing that things were about to get three wide quickly, Chuck decided to try and position his car farther to the right, but that plan failed miserably because he misjudged his position and made contact with the #93 car as he was attempting a clean pass. The contact sent our car nose first into the pit wall, resulting in serious right front suspension damage. The incident was deemed a racing incident, and that was the correct call.

After nearly 5 minutes of repairs, Chuck got back in the fight, several laps down. There were two other contact incidents with the #93 car, one of which resulted in a drive through penalty for the #93 car for avoidable contact and the other was just light door to door contact. Chuck finished his three stints right about the 2 ½ hour mark in the race and handed the car off to Kevin Linden.

Kevin Linden drove 2 great stints that included very little drama and handed off the car to Russell Klaesson. Kevin is an amazingly consistent driver and made sure we didn’t lose any more positions. Russell did a “rinse and repeat” of Kevin’s stints, finishing out the remaining two stints with no issues. In fact, with mere minutes remaining in the race, Team Yellow was able to pick up another position, finishing in 5th place. We’ll take all the points we can get.

The end of the race saw an amazing fuel strategy fight between vApex Team Green #99 driver Mikey Grems and Black Adder Motorsport #68 driver Sven Cammaerts. There was much speculation as to whether or not Mikey could finish the race without having to come in for a splash of fuel. But, in the end, vApex Team Green called the perfect strategy and finished the race with just enough fuel to pull off some impressive victory donuts.

All in all, it was a great event at a great track. Thanks to the series organizers and marshals, they are all doing a great job. This is a very professionally organized series. vApex Racing Group is already preparing for the next race, at Circuit of the Americas in Texas. But, the season finale at Road Atlanta looms on the not so distant horizon.