Homestead Race Report
Although we were not fully pleased with the handling of the car throughout the weekend, we ended the race in a pretty good fourth place.
All weekend we have been chasing a traction problem which I’m sure took away some of the performance of the #91 Riley-Matthews Motorsport Riley Pontiac. The outside temperature was up, the track was greasy, and it was the first time we ran the Pirelli tires in those high temperature conditions. But it was obvious during the race that our competitors were having issues too.
Jim Matthews started the race, after he qualified the car in 16th place on Friday. He kept his position until the first yellow flag came out on lap 11. Jim pitted and the teamwork of the Riley-Matthews Motorsport crew got the car up to 10th place when the green flag was waved again on lap 14. After 31 minutes of racing the second caution flag came out. This time the #91 car pitted for tires, fuel and a driver change. I took over on lap 22 and my first lap under green was lap 24. At that point I was running in 24th position. I started making my way back to the front and by lap 56, I moved into the top 5. Five laps later, another incident on track caused the Safety-Car to come out again. There was a total of exact 10 yellow flag situation during the entire race. When I pitted on lap 63 for tires and fuel, Tyler, one of our mechanics ran up to the car to change the tires. By doing so he almost got run over by another car. As he avoided contact with that particular car, he twisted his arm (he didn’t let the tire go) and the tire bounced into his hip. After repositioning himself and then attacking my wheels, we lost a couple of seconds. This dropped us back into 9th place after that round of pit stops. But luckily enough Tyler got away from it uninjured! Ten laps later I had battled my way back to 5th on track and I have to admit, it was a great fun race to drive. There were some great overtaking moves and the battles with Matt Plumb, Alex Gurney and Oswaldo Negri to only name a few, were close but fair and fun.
The last lap was probably the hottest one of the race. Literally. As I tried overtaking the #60 car coming out of turn 8, Oswaldo defended his position and he left me no room. I had no choice but to run through the grass and sand on the inside of the back straight. I came back out of the throttle and settled for fourth but on that last lap effort, the radiator got filled up with sand and grass and I was happy to finish the race and to slowly make my way back to the pits, as the engine temperatures kept on going up.
So all in all I think our car was maybe not feeling right during all the practice sessions, but I had a reasonably comfortable car and I could keep up with the pace without demanding too much from my tires. And that helped me a lot towards the end of my tire stints and therefore to move up on the board.
I would like to thank the entire team and all my partners such as Pontiac, Eurotech, Freem once again for this great opportunity and I already look forward to the next race in Mexico City on April 19th. For your information, we, Bob Stallings Riley/Matthews Motorsport are currently fourth in points!