Alton, VA
Roman De Angelis finished the weekend at Virginia International Raceway with a second and fourth-place finish, moving him closer to clinching the Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge USA by Yokohama series title. De Angelis started the weekend strong by qualifying on pole for race one in a rain-filled session. Roman was able to post a time of 02:08.065, over a second faster than his closest competitor. With five laps to go and battling a quickly degrading rear left tire Roman was passed for the lead. There was a concern that the tire would not last to the end of the race, but Roman was able to push through and bring the car home for a second-place finish.In race two of the weekend, Roman was once again battling tire issues and ended up with a fourth-place finish; making this his first race not on the podium in the Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge USA by Yokohama series this year.
It took eight great weekends to hit our unlucky break. Pole by 1.8 seconds in the rain started the weekend right, but after leading a drying, wet Race 1 for 40 minutes, a left rear tire began to fail due to what we think was debris, so rather than pitting, we coasted the last three laps and gave up the lead to salvage 2nd. A bad start led us to manage a self-caused tire issue for Race 2, which due to my own mistake dropped us to 4th. Tough one for the boys but one bad weekend is a small scratch on our point lead. - De Angelis
Although the weekend was not as successful as past races this year, Roman still holds a commanding lead atop the series with 407 points and a 58 point lead over second place. The next race for Roman will be at the WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca in Monterey, California.
