WRPM Race Update

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The Streak Continues for WRPMotorsports driver Willie Phee as he wins rounds 16 and 17 of the 2021 SARRC Championship series at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida. August 7-8, 2021 – Daytona International Speedway Daytona Beach, Florida. Round’s 16 and 17 of the 2021 SARRC Championship series was held at Daytona International Speedway and WRPMotorsports driver Willie Phee would top both races. Qualifying for the weekend would start Saturday morning with the quickest time in either qualifying or the race setting the grid for race two. Phee would end up qualifying fourth in class and seventy overall after fuel pickup problems during qualifying. “The Friday test day started out with no issues for the first three sessions but in session four the car would cut out in several of the infield turns. I brought the car in and the crew diagnosed a problem with the throttle body. We replaced it and went out in the Saturday morning warm up session. We ended up with a similar problem in the warm up session and traced it to a bad connection on the throttle body. Several zip ties and a little super glue and we thought we had the problem solved” said Phee. Phee would go out for the morning qualifying session and still have a problem with the car losing power in several of the infield turns. Phee would complete about half of the session and even with the car problems would qualify fourth in class and seventh overall. “I was surprised by the qualifying position with all of the problems I was having” said Phee. “The crew continued their diagnosis of the car and found a bad fuel pump, so they replaced the pump and got the car ready for the first race”. Phee would line up for race one and get a great start and move from sixth to third by the exit of turn one and move into second overall and the lead of ITS by turn three. Video can be seen here: https://youtu.be/QNRbJR155Ss Phee would have a 3.5 second gap over the second place ITS car as he moved into the overall lead on lap four of the 25-minute race. On lap six a full course caution would come out for an ITR BMW that went off in the bus stop chicane, and the race would end under caution. “The car ran great for the entire session and I was happy to get such a great start. The crew did an awesome job in getting the car fixed for the race. I knew if the car ran well, I could get a decent result” said Phee. Race two on Sunday would start just before lunch and Phee would line up second overall and first in class due to his race time in race one being 3.4 seconds faster than his qualifying time. Phee would maintain second overall until lap four when he would move into the overall lead. He would hold onto that lead until lap seven when he would drop back to second overall but still leading ITS by nearly nine seconds. That lead would evaporate on lap nine as a full course caution would come out and bunch up the field. The restart would occur on lap 11 with one lap to go and the second place ITS car would get a run off of NASCAR turn four and get by Phee going into turn one. Phee maintained the inside line in turn one when the now leader went wide. They were side by side through turn three when Phee would have the inside line going into the infield kink. Video can be seen here: https://youtu.be/EEcBzaSGnx8 Phee would gap the second-place car and end up with a 3.2 second lead at the finish. “This was such a strange weekend with all of the problems we had on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning I wasn’t the weekend would turn out as well as it did. I was very happy to get a decent qualifying time with car problems and even more happy when the crew figured out what the problem was. As usual the OPM crew did a great job diagnosing the problem and then finally fixing it. I really owe the weekend results to them” said Phee. The next race is scheduled for August 28-29, 2021 at Barber Motorsports Park in Leeds, Alabama. The WRPMotorsports team is sponsored by Optima Batteries, Sparco USA, Total Lubricants, MCS Suspension and OPM Autosports. Photo’s courtesy of Dave Green at https://www.flagtoflagphotography.com/