RACE REPORT: Pit Boss 250 at Circuit of the Americas

QUOTES

“Fought hard here all day at COTA. Obviously coming from the back was a little eventful early on, but Allen [Hart] had a pretty good strategy for us. We cycled in the mix when we needed to be, and we were in a pretty good position. I think we found ourselves in the Top-10 at times, Top-15 pretty solidly for a good chunk of the day. Unfortunately, we had a tire going down at the end and lost a few spots. It finally went completely flat with about two corners to go and just kind of limped it home. Still, after the last few weeks, we’ll take a P18 finish. It got us solid points and a little foundation here that we can work with. One of my favorite tracks is coming up next weekend at Richmond Raceway. I love it there. I feel like today was a small step in the right direction for some momentum that was much, much needed for the 26 team, and I’m excited to see what we will do from here.”

– Kaz Grala, Driver of the No. 26 Fire Dept. Coffee GR Supra

“I feel like we were pretty okay on speed in practice. I felt we needed to tighten the car up pretty well, and we did for the race. In qualifying, I had lap going that would have probably put us 10th-12th, and I made a mistake and wheel-hopped in Turn 11 pretty badly and lost a lot of time. I figured we’d be good in the race and move forward, and that’s exactly what we did for most of the race. Kris [Bowen] did a great job making adjustments and we kept getting better and better with every run. I still needed more speed there in the end. We were probably about a second off from where we wanted to be, but I felt like we had the speed to run in the Top-12, but I got turned with six or seven laps to go and fell back to 26th. I passed a few guys right there at the end and got back up to P19. I feel like this was a good recovery, and the car is in one piece, so I feel like, overall, we still had a decent day. Obviously, we would have liked to have had a better finish, but it’s good to keep the car in one piece, build a little bit of momentum and gain on it in Richmond.”

– Connor Mosack, driver of the No. 24 Toyota GR Supra