The young St-Joseph-de-Beauce native had a difficult night as he participated in the final race of the Southern Super Series (SSS) championship in Florida on Saturday evening, despite excellent Top 10 practice runs on both Friday and Saturday. Lessard unfortunately had to pack-it-in 27 laps into the 125 laps planned for the Deep South Cranes 125 in Pensacola, on the Five Flags Speedway, due to equipment breakdown.
While practice runs on Friday and Saturday indicated the Toyota Development Driver (TRD) and his Toyota Camry were as performant as ever, the officials at the technical inspection gave him a penalty for a ground clearance issue prior to the Saturday qualifications, although he had passed three times in front of the officials before receiving this one-lap penalty. Raphaël was then forced to qualify his car using a single lap contrary to the usual two laps.
The driver of the Toyota Camry #99 FRL Express/Toyota-TRD/JBL Audio prepared by David Gilliland Racing managed to establish the 19th fastest time during this single qualifying lap. Starting from the back of the grid, Lessard didn’t have time to make a great come back as he has accustomed us to, since his race ended 27 laps after the green flag.
Lessard made a hard contact with the wall after his front right bearing broke. Even if it was a fluke accident, it was still very frustrating for Lessard as he barely completed a quarter of the planned laps.
“I am very disappointed by my evening, it is not at all how I wanted it to go, but it’s not good to dwell on it. Two important races are coming and the car will be ready for these two 400-lap races,” said Lessard.
Raphaël’s next two races will be highly spectacular events as they are two mythical 400-lap races gathering the best SLM driver in America. Firstly, the All American 400 on the Fairground Speedway in Nashville, Tennessee, then the Winchester 400 on the Winchester Speedway oval in Indiana. The All American 400 will be taking place on October 1st while the Winchester 400 will be on October 8.
RLR PR
