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Contact Derails Promising Outing In Austin For Stevenson Motorsports
With GRAND-AM staging an inaugural race at the Circuit of the Americas this weekend, Stevenson Motorsports headed to Texas looking to shake off Daytona’s tough start to the 2013 Rolex Series season with a strong result in Austin.
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Unfortunately, despite a great effort that saw the No. 57 Chevrolet Camaro GT.R show strong pace on race day, contact from a fellow GT machine during the race meant that all the effort from the Stevenson Motorsports group didn’t deliver the hoped-for result.
Despite battling food poisoning all weekend and only running three practice laps around the 3.4-mile road course prior to GT qualifying, Edwards put the No. 57 Camaro fourth on the grid.
The thorough Stevenson Motorsports pre-race team preparation procedures yielded the discovery of debris in the engine oil filter and looking to make sure there was no issue on race day, the team elected to change motors and forfeit the hard-earned qualifying spot. But Edwards immediately began a charge forward as he improved five positions on just the first lap. The Stevenson Camaro showed speed around the technical track with Edwards moving up into the fourth position within the first 40 minutes of the race.
Unfortunately, that forward movement was slowed when contact from a fellow GT machine caused damage to the No. 57 and forced Edwards to pit lane for repairs.
“It’s always frustrating to put in all the time and money into a weekend and just get punted by someone in your race,” said Edwards of the contact. “It was especially brutal for me because I spent the whole weekend sick, skipped practice, and my whole purpose of doing all that, resting and drinking fluids was to get ready for the race. We had a good car - the best it’s been all weekend. I don’t think we had the pace to really win the race, but I think we could have—especially with the way the race went at the end—we could have had a podium, or at least a top-five to salvage some good points.”
The team worked quickly to make repairs and get the damaged car back on track with Liddell behind the wheel. The longtime Stevenson driver delivered a strong performance - running the same lap times as the leaders - but with valuable time lost in the pits, the No. 57 had fallen five laps down and Liddell was forced to settle for 15th at the finish.
“It’s a disappointing day,” said Team Manager Mike Johnson. “Robin (Liddell) was able to run with the leaders. We obviously don’t have the speed as a lot of the cars out there but had we been in front at the end I think we would definitely have been in the top-five which would have been a much better result than 15th. It’s not the way to start a season, but hopefully our luck will turn around at Barber.”
Stevenson Motorsports will return to Rolex Series action at Barber Motorsports Park for Round 3 of the GRAND-AM Rolex Series Championship April 3-6.
PaddockTalk Perspective
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