DE ANGELIS: A Challenging COTA

I hadn’t been back to Circuit of The Americas since 2020 when I competed in some Pirelli GT4 America SprintX events so I didn’t know what to expect.

A lot has happened since then and I’m in an unfamiliar car with unfamiliar tires. While we got lucky with the weather for our GT4 America races, that luck did not come with us to our races. From unreasonable contact during the race to a fire in the pit lane, we had our fair share of challenges.

We had a lot of pace in our practice sessions on Thursday and Friday so I was really looking forward to getting a good qualifying result. Unfortunately qualifying didn’t go as well as we had hoped and I ended up qualifying tenth in class. Not where we want to be, but I’m still learning the GT4 and the tires.

We had a really great car and I didn’t take advantage of it, but hopefully next round will go a bit better. Qualifying is an aspect of my racing that I have been focusing quite heavily on and I look to continue to improve that part of my driving abilities.

Our first race on Saturday didn’t start as we had planned either. Gray (Newell) started off great and we began the race eighth in class. In the beginning of the race Gray got spun and we dropped to the back of the field. When I got behind the wheel my goal was to gain as many positions as I could, but that proved to be pretty difficult without the help of a caution.

During Sunday’s race we were struck with bad luck once again. I thought we had another good start. I was on the inside of one of the Porsche Caymans who didn’t want to give me much room. The Porsche ended up making contact with me, turning in when I was already there and breaking our front splitter. As the splitter broke it pierced an oil line which started dripping oil over the tire.

Eventually we lost all our pressure as I was driving down pit lane. When I stopped in the pit box we had a little bit of a fire which was put out quickly by the team, though this mayhem took us out of the race.

It was definitely not a great weekend for us, but it’s always fun to race at COTA. I really wish we had done better for the team since they did a great job. We had great cars as always, but hopefully we will do better at the next round.

One thing that I am still getting used to is the difference in tires from Pirelli to Michelin. I am used to running Michelin in IMSA, but in SRO we run Pirelli. I feel like the biggest difference is the peak of the tire and how long you are able to do quick laps with the Pirelli tires.

Pirelli seems to have one peak, one really good lap and then it kinda falls off whereas Michelin tires can get away with three or four fast laps. For the next race, I am really focusing on learning more about the tires so I can perform how I’d like to on track.

SRO heads to Virginia International Raceway next. Every year I enjoy going to VIR with IMSA and I think the racing will be really good in the GT4 cars because of the way the track is laid out. I’m looking forward to continuing to learn and be more diverse in my driving abilities and competing with SRO is definitely helping with that.