Race 8 of 10 in the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge

Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca (July 9th, 2011) – The #95 Ford Mustang driving by Brad Adams and Ben Crosland visited the CONTINENTAL TIRE SPORTS CAR FESTIVAL POWERED BY MAZDA at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.  With the two rookie drivers Joining up from the World-Challenge.com series it setup to be a great weekend. Overall with some great strategies and a few mistakes by the RacewithRP.com team they ended up with a 17th out of 54th finishing position overall.

Brad Adams and Ben Crosland have been racing together for a while as a team in the Mustang Challenge series and the World-Challenge Series, however this is the first time they are racing in the Continental Tire series as co-drivers for the #95 Ford Mustang.

Brad Adams started in the drivers seat for the first stint of the race. Having started from the 27th position in the GS Class he had a lot of completion in front of him and 2.5 hours of race time to go. With some minor contact and overall great driving a yellow was thrown. Brad stayed out under the guidance of Jim Daniels, hoping for another yellow closer to the fuel window. The next yellow fell and Brad came in for a full pit stop and driver change to Ben Crosland while in the 17th position.

As the #95 entered the pits the crew jumped the wall, changed four tires, added fuel, and Brad and Ben swapped positions. As the crew finished up Ben struggled slightly with the wheel causing what looked like a little frustration, As Ben pulled out of the pits he went to the inside of the next teams tires on pit road but turned out early and clipped the two tires. There is a thirty second penalty for hitting another teams equipment so a black flag was to be served.

As the green was thrown Ben had one lap to race and then head to the pits to serve his penalty. While in the pits serving his penalty another yellow was thrown for a car off track.  This was luck, but good luck as this allowed Ben to keep on the lead lap.

As the race continued Ben made up positions until another yellow came out and Jim Daniels decided we would come in for a splash of fuel to prevent us from having to pit later on and have a chance to gain some valuable track position as others may have to pit later for fuel.
This early pit lead to a worry free finish to the end where Ben crossed the line in the 17th position.  This ended a great weekend and with only 3 Grand-AM events under the teams belt this year it was good to finish on the lead lap and in the top half of the field. This finish puts the RacewithRP.com team in the twenty-fifth position overall.

This event will air on Speed 07/17/2011 at 1:00PM ET.

The next event is the B+ Foundation Heroes 200 at New Jersey Motorsports Park in Millville, NJ July 22nd and 23rd. Hope to see you there.