TAYLOR: Deja Vu in Watkins Glen
Photo: Jake Galstad/IMSA
I was hoping we left the crazy weather in Le Mans, but I guess it followed us to Watkins Glen this year.
We entered the weekend a little further back in the points than where we’d like to be at this point in the year. With only four races to go, we’re really going to need to be fighting for wins for the rest of the season to stay in contention.
After the 10 car had such a strong run at Detroit, we felt pretty confident coming into Watkins Glen.
While Louis, Filipe, and I were over racing at Le Mans, Ricky was doing the hard work for us in Indianapolis at the simulator getting us prepped and ready to go for Watkins Gen. I think he even had a visit from Marcus Ericsson one afternoon to do some testing for us in the sim to give Ricky some rest between runs.
We rolled off the truck with both of our Acuras in a pretty good spot on Friday. It was almost impossible to get a clear lap in practice to really see where we stacked up, but we felt like the car was pretty good in clean air. With over 50 cars on track, you were passing one, if not more cars every lap.
Photo: Jake Galstad/IMSA
Louis did a mega job in qualifying to put us on pole. I think it caught everyone by surprise to see the pace of the car when we had some clean track, but he definitely got everything out of it.
With qualifying offering some points these days, the pole was a nice little bump for us in the right direction for the championship fight.
We woke up Sunday to see a large band of weather coming towards us from the west. It felt like it was going to be a Le Mans repeat all day with rain starting and stopping throughout the race.
That would make things especially interesting considering Louis is the only one out of our four drivers that has actually driven this car in the rain before.
Knowing what Watkins Glen weather is like, we have seen red flags in the past, so we knew maintaining track position at all times would be very important just in case one comes out at the right or wrong time.
The race was as hectic as expected. It felt very much like a chess match every time you would come through the GT field. The closing speeds between the GTP and GTD cars is quite drastic at some points on the track.
The last time I raced here in a prototype was in DPi back in 2019. Those cars had less power, but more downforce than what we have now, so the rhythm that you go through traffic is quite different than what it used to be.
Photo: Rick Dole/IMSA
Louis had a solid first two stints holding us in the top-five before coming in to hand things over. I think we made a good call early on during that pit stop sequence and were able to come out on track in P3 and then make a pass on the 01 car for P2 later in the stint.
From here until the end, things were tricky. It felt eerily similar to Le Mans where you are getting rain on one half of the track while the other half stays dry.
We were making good decisions on tires most of the day. We only got caught out one time, but when it mattered most, our guys at WTRAndretti made the right call at the right time.
Right as the final rain shower hit, both the 10 and 40 were able to dive into the pits and come back out in first and second.
It immediately went yellow and then soon followed by the red flag. Just as we had expected with a potential red flag, we were sitting right where we wanted to be if the rain kept falling.
When the cars started rolling again, things sort of unraveled for us. The 10 car had a small failure in the right rear just before the green flag. We believe it may have been a result of the contact they had from the 7 car earlier in the day.
And for us in the 40, we struggled with one thing all day, and it bit us at the end. Our car seemed strong on the long run all race long, but on starts and restarts, we struggled.
We ended the day in fourth. Not the result we wanted and more points lost. I think from here until the end of the year we have nothing to lose, so for us, we can take all the risk we want going for race wins.
Source: Sports Car 365