Urry: “Our Team is Focused on What We Need to Do”

His website has it on the home page front and center. “Sloan Urry: Going for the championship this season. Taking no prisoners.”

That is the attitude that has taken the 23-year-old native of Park City, Utah to three consecutive class wins and a 52-point championship lead in Pirelli World Challenge GT Cup competition this year.

A runner-up last year in the spec Porsche class, the TruSpeed Autosport driver said that he was eager to put last year’s winless drought behind him.

“Last year to be honest was a pretty big disappointment for me,” Urry told Sportscar365. “I went through a refresh mode, if you will, before the season, knowing I didn’t perform the way that I know I can.

“I think it had to do with restructuring the team a little bit, a mental state change for me just thinking about the season differently, and trying to not think about it too much and just drive the way I know I can.”

Urry said his TruSpeed team has taken a fresh approach too, following a dominant 2015 season from Colin Thompson, who was effectively he teammate but racing under the Kelly Moss Motorsports banner.

“Our team is much more focused on what we need to do,” he said. “It’s just a one-car effort so that focuses things already directly and immediately, and it’s helped us not just on the performance side but on the commercial side as well with our sponsors.”

Urry has another ace up his sleeve, in the form of driver coach Ryan Dalziel.

“I haven’t had too many driver coaches in my career, but so far he’s been a great asset for us,” he said. “Not just with the car’s performance or my performance, but looking at my career as a whole and taking the right steps to further that.

“Obviously he’s had a lot of success in racing; he’s a great guy in and out of the car, and he’s been a great help to us as well.”

The changes have led to a fruitful start to the 2016 campaign. In addition to three wins in the last three races, Urry opened the season with a runner-up result in Race 1 at Circuit of the Americas.

And he has achieved the breakthrough while balancing a high-commitment job away from the race track, as the director of product development for Avasis, which specializes in construction management software.

“It’s something that I actually enjoy: the crazy competition of racing and the added competition of the business world,” Urry said. “I like staying busy, I like always having challenges in my life.

“Luckily my other job is flexible to the point where when I get to the race track, I can just tell everyone back at the office that it’s race time, I’m a race car driver for the rest of the week, so leave me alone!”

Through four races in 2016, all of the loose ends have come together, leading to a dream start heading into this weekend’s races at Barber Motorsports Park.

But the prime motivator for team and driver alike is the painful memory of coming up short.

“Any time I go into a season, as any competitor would, I want to do as well as possible, and the best possible result is winning the championship,” said Urry.

“I definitely came in this year with a more aggressive attitude about how I was going to accomplish that.

“I think I’ve made it pretty clear that I’m sick of being second in the championship. It’s happened to me three times now in the last four or five years. Now I’m ready to win it all.”