The first event of the 2022 IMSA season is in the books. Our Forbush Performance team had a busy couple of weeks at Daytona International Speedway in preparation for the opening Michelin Pilot Challenge Series race, which was a four-hour enduro on Friday.
The weather for race week definitely took an unexpected turn, with damp conditions almost all week and much cooler temperatures. It certainly didn’t feel like warm, sunny Florida, like it had the week before during The Roar Before the 24.
It was great to have special guests from our team partners at CMR Roofing there to cheer us on!
Fortunately, we had dry conditions for our race, which was great news for the teams as well as the incredible number of fans who were on hand.
Unfortunately, a sensor calibration problem prevented the car from achieving its peak power, which really cost us on the big 2.5-mile oval, where our acceleration was greatly reduced. Although the race didn’t go as we had hoped from a car performance standpoint, Forbush Performance did a phenomenal job executing fast pit stops and giving us a superb race strategy to maximize our potential. The team persevered and put us in the best position possible thanks to all of their great off-track work.
We’re already anxiously working on solving the issue and, of course, getting ready for our next on-track outing. We’ll be testing at Sebring this month, so our next time on track is right around the corner.
Mazda MX-5 Cup had their season opener at Daytona, as well, and I still have an active role with the series in race control. As expected, the racing was exciting and included a nail-biter finish in race one, with the leaders going four-wide across the line, at night, in the rain!