This past week was a long one at Virginia International Raceway. I was there for the SRO America triple-header, and I was coaching two teams. This was the first pro race since January for me, and the first one of the year for VIR.
We had beautiful weather at VIR, albeit HOT all week, with the occasional evening shower.
I’ve been working with the CB Motorsports Touring Car team this season, and we had high hopes going into this event after a great test at VIR last month. I was also sharing my time with a new competitor to the series, Karl Leinsing, who’s driving in the new GT2 class. These are exciting, brand-new cars for 2020 that select manufacturers have built to an exclusive high-performance spec.
Needless to say, my week was quite busy between the two clients! Each made steady progress through the week, which gave everyone high expectations for the races.
It was Karl’s first race ever at VIR, and he earned a podium result in one of his races. That really capped off a satisfying weekend for him. He achieved all of his goals, he kept his car clean all weekend, and now he has his sights set on more podium finishes!
The TCA starting grid for Race 2.
Over at the CB Motorsports tent, Matt Forbush, who is new to pro racing this year, did a great job in bringing home three good results with valuable championship points. He’s a quick study and continues to make great progress as this season ramps up.
The team’s youngest driver, Caleb Bacon, showed amazing speed in all three of his races but unfortunately, he had incredibly tough luck and suffered from mechanical issues that sidelined him from getting the results that he deserved. In race three, Caleb even had the quickest lap of the race while battling for a podium result.
These types of weekends, whether you’re an experienced veteran or a new driver, are really character-building opportunities. The series heads to Sonoma in August for the next round, and it will be important for the team to carry all of the forward progress that was made at VIR. There were so many takeaways from the weekend, like car setup progress, extracting more and more speed out of the track, and even understanding why the mechanical problems happened and how to avoid them in the future. All of that adds up to valuable information as we move forward with the season. Even when races don’t go as planned, the event as a whole can be a really positive, rewarding experience.