CA Sport goes to the beach....again!
OK. It was not a walk on the beach, but the 67 Skullcandy Honda continues it's Florida vacation with a run in the Grand Am Kia 200 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, site of round two of the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge. Coming off a top five run in the season opening Daytona 200, the team was anxious to reaffirm its position as a front runner in the championship. Welcoming new sponsor XS Energy Drink for the remainder of the season, we had much to do and much to prove. Great car preparation allowed us to concentrate solely on chassis setup at this very challenging track in terms of technical solutions. We unloaded a rather dreadful car and struggled for balance and overall grip in the opening practice sessions. Some huge swings by the engineering side saw us regain some ground and find reasonable long run pace. One lap runs were less than stellar, with our times well out of the top ten. There was only one thing left to do. Throw the school bus at it for the race and hope it sticks! So we did.
Lara had a reasonable qualifying session and confirmed a better car balance if not outright pace. Her opening stint was great, making some solid ground on the field and executing great passes. She handed over to Vesko on lap 17 during the second caution period ( 66 cars on 2.3 miles can get busy ). Over the next few laps the field normalized and we seemed to have a better race car than expected, picking our way towards the front. In his usual style, Vesko left exactly one car width of race track on a pass for position, which proved insufficient, so round the competition went. Grand Am deemed it our fault, resulting in a stop and go plus ten seconds penalty. Since the field was bunched up after a recent restart, it meant we ended up dead last and a half a lap back to boot. Not good. Matching the leader's pace meant we stayed on the lead lap, but without a caution thing were always going to finish as they were.
Grand Am racers being aspiring and all that, however, someone managed to insert themselves into the scenery and brought out a caution........ with two laps of green flag running after the restart to give all a chance for the do or die tricks of this trade! Last words from the man with the wheel were " I am either going to make something happen or jump the fence and walk home"! No walking required, as we went from 16th to 8 in the last two laps, missing a seventh by a foot. Not a great race save for the last two laps, but great damage control in the end and a solid bag of points. Post race Vesko confirmed that a late race sip of XS Energy Drink gave him the boost for the last lap flair.
Dont' lift