DeltaWing equals season-high qualifying position at Road America

Elkhart Lake, Wis. (August 8, 2015) – The Claro/TracFone DeltaWing Racing Cars team equaled its best qualifying effort of the season today, putting the DeltaWing coupe in the sixth starting position for tomorrow’s Continental Tire Road Race Showcase at Road America.

The team plans to keep its streak going at the historic road course, as the DeltaWing has finished in the top-10 in both its races here (a fifth-place overall finish for the DeltaWing roadster in 2013 and an eighth-place finish – sixth in the Prototype class – for the DeltaWing coupe last year).

We’re understanding more and more just how the new gearbox and suspension system works.

Memo Rojas

Saturday dawned cloudy, cool and dry, a stark contrast to Friday’s stormy weather. As torrential rains pummeled the 4.048-mile track yesterday, the team opted not to risk the car in conditions they most likely would not encounter in Sunday’s race. That left drivers Katherine Legge and Memo Rojas with only this morning’s one-hour practice session to set up the car for qualifying. Rojas managed traffic and the warming afternoon conditions to post a lap of 1:57.736, good enough for the sixth-place starting position in tomorrow’s TUDOR United SportsCar Championship event.

Memo Rojas: “The car is the best it’s been all year. The team has made improvements since last month's race in Canada and did a great job giving us a good setup. I’m the happiest I’ve been with the car all year and it shows in the lap times. We’re understanding more and more just how the new gearbox and suspension system works. In addition to the new gearbox, we completely redesigned the rear suspension for the start of this season. All the components are working together better now, we’ve gained grip and the car is better balanced. It doesn’t change my driving, I’m driving ten-tenths all the time. But obviously, the better the performance, the quicker we can go, so I think we can take the car to the front tomorrow. The car has the performance to make passes and hopefully we can make a good finish.”

Team Manager Tim Keene: “We’re just over a second off pole and that’s the closest we’ve been all year. We didn’t practice at all yesterday, because with all the rain it just wasn’t worth it; we weren’t going to learn anything and we’d just risk the car. Luckily, the car was good right out of the truck today, since we only got an hour this morning before qualifying. We made a small shock adjustment and a spring change and that was it. It’s really impressive, that both drivers were able to get up to speed quickly this morning and that Memo was able to put down some really competitive times in qualifying. We’re looking forward to the race tomorrow; I think we can be on the podium if we don’t have any problems. It’s a long race, we have to stay out of trouble and make no mistakes.”

The two hour and 40 minute Continental Tire Road Race Showcase takes the green flag Sunday at 2:05 p.m. CT. The race will be live on FOX Sports 1.

DeltaWing Racing Cars