Photo: Mike Levitt/IMSA
Adam Adelson and Elliott Skeer are looking to “copy and paste” their recent success at The Brickyard into this weekend’s Fanatec GT World Challenge America powered by AWS title-deciding Indianapolis 8 Hour presented by AWS, amid a narrow points lead in the Pro class.
The Wright Motorsports duo enter Saturday’s double-points paying season finale with just a seven-point advantage over DXDT Racing’s Tommy Milner and Alec Udell, who are riding on an eight-race class win streak in their No. 63 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R.
While Adelson and Skeer haven’t won in Fanatec GT America competition since sweeping the season-opening weekend at Sonoma Raceway, they’re coming off a breakthrough first IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship class victory in last month’s Battle on the Bricks.
The pairing are joined in the team’s No. 120 Porsche 911 GT3 R by Laurin Heinrich, who also claimed class honors at the recent WeatherTech Championship round.
“It’s just copy and paste, that’s the goal,” Adelson told Sportscar365. “We learned so much about the car, even with the limited track time we got.
“We came [to the Battle on the Bricks] with the goal of learning for that weekend and we found ourselves in a position where we now know what needs to be done and what we need out of our car.
“There’s a myriad of different factors that are going to play into our performance vs. the Corvette’s but I’m so confident in our driver lineup, I’m so confident in our team.
“We’re on an absolute roll. We just kissed the bricks and that’s a feeling I want to get used to.”
Adelson and Skeer’s triumph two weeks ago marked their first bout of success at The Brickyard, which has largely been clouded with dark memories.
The duo lost out on the Fanatec GT America Pro-Am class title to CrowdStrike by Riley’s Colin Braun and George Kurtz after heading into last year’s event as the class leaders.
“This has been a very high emotion track for both Adam and myself,” said Skeer. “I think we’re one for seven on the emotion scale [here].
“We’ve had one good race out of the seven we’ve had here for that.
“We kept the streak going. Indy has been a high emotion event every single time we’ve done it. But to have this sort of emotion [with the IMSA win].
“We came into the weekend looking to build confidence for the 8 Hour and I think we can say ‘mission accomplished’ on that side.
“A lot was learned over the day. We lost FP1, which was definitely was a bit of a bummer on the data collection side but ultimately what the team was able to come together with, with the data they had, was awesome.
“In terms of momentum build, this is exactly what we needed going into that.”
Despite differences in Balance of Performance and the change of tire supplier between events, Adelson said they’re focused on the elements they can control, heading into Saturday’s title-decider.
“I’ve learned something really amazing from Elliott over the years since I started racing,” said Adelson. “Elliott was my first-ever driver coach. He took me from zero to where I’m at right now.
“[He says], ‘You can only do what you can with the tools that you have.’
“We don’t need to be thinking about any of that. We just need to go think about maximizing our performance.
“We need to think about how we can most accurately convey what the car needs to our team and that’s all we need to focus on and hopefully that will get the job done.”
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