Performance Tech Posts Season Best at Road America

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Performance Tech Motorsports finished second, a season best, in the Prototype Challenge class at Road America in the Continental Tire Road Race Showcase.

 
The season-high finish wasn’t without frustration. After taking over for James French, of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, Conor Daly had a hard fought battle for first. Daly spent a majority of his stint chasing down the No. 11 of leader Bruno Junqueira. Thanks to strategy and a fuel reserve Daly made his way around the No. 11 and, with precision passes, created a gap and placed traffic between himself and Junqueira.
 
On the final lap in Turn 5 Daly caught traffic and after quickly slowing the No. 38 spun. Daly quickly recovered and reentered the race before third-place Colin Braun in the No. 54 could pass Daly, salvaging his second.
 
“Good strategy today for us, for sure,” Daly said. “It allowed me to get around Bruno (Junqueira) while he was on cold tires. We didn’t quite have the pace to stay too far ahead. When our tires wore down a little bit, he was a little quicker. I was able to use traffic to keep him behind me; I had a pretty solid gap.
 
“Sadly, I caught the Aston Martin in Turn 5 and it was going way slower than I would have imagined. Bruno caught us right there and as soon as he got a run on me down in the hairpin I just locked up the rear brakes trying to defend. I couldn’t hold onto it, just my fault there. I didn’t get hit, so just a really sad mistake because we probably should have won that race.”
 
French, who won his third TOTAL Pole Award at his home track this weekend, showed development in his racecraft after conserving his tank of fuel until the end of his stint. This allowed the team to have an alternate pit strategy and pit one less time than the rest of their class by stretching French’s minimum hour in the car to one pit stop.
 
“Overall considering everything it went pretty well, not perfect,” French said. “That was the first time we really had to save fuel. We were the only team that made it the full hour on one tank so I think that’s a small victory in itself, so we managed to learn a little bit. But at the end it wasn’t the result that we wanted. Conor did an awesome job in the car. We were 99.9 percent of the way there; it just didn’t work out in the end. But it’s good to be on podium at home.”
 
(left to right) Daly and French on Podium at Road America

Team Principal Brent O’Neill was gutted for Daly and his team but took it in stride. The podium finish felt deserved after not finishing in three previous races due to various issues he concluded to be bad luck.

 
“It was good you know. It’s racing, we had a good car and Conor did a great job in the car,” O’Neill said. “James, I got to tell you once again he starts the race and does everything you tell him to do to put the car in a position to win at the end of the race. Everyone was trying to figure out what our strategy was and I think they finally figured it out with about an our left in the race. As much of a cliché it is, that’s racing. But Conor looked great out there. It happens. You just have to go home, lick your wounds and then get back after it. Which is what we’ll do.”
 
The PC class will rejoin the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship in Austin, Texas Sept. 17-19 at Circuit of the Americas for the second to final round of the 2015 season. 
Keep up with Performance Tech Motorsports by following the team on Facebook and Twitter at @Perf_Tech. For more information on the team, visit performancetechmotorsports.com.
Adam Sinclair
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