{"id":1577,"date":"2019-09-15T21:40:39","date_gmt":"2019-09-16T01:40:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/?p=1577"},"modified":"2023-05-03T16:08:48","modified_gmt":"2023-05-03T20:08:48","slug":"rebel-rock-racing-takes-10th-at-laguna-seca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/2019\/09\/15\/rebel-rock-racing-takes-10th-at-laguna-seca\/","title":{"rendered":"Rebel Rock Racing takes 10th at Laguna Seca"},"content":{"rendered":"

MONTEREY, CA (15\u00a0September 2019) \u2013 Rebel Rock Racing drivers Frank\u00a0DePew\u00a0and Robin Liddell took a hard-fought 10th\u00a0place finish in Saturday\u2019s Laguna\u00a0Seca\u00a0120 at\u00a0WeatherTech\u00a0Raceway Laguna\u00a0Seca, the penultimate round of the 2019 IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge\u00a0season.<\/p>\n

The result marks the fifth top-ten finish of the season for\u00a0DePew\u00a0and Liddell in the No. 71 Urban Grid Solar\/MVPCapital Chevrolet Camaro GT4.R.<\/p>\n

DePew\u00a0started from 19th\u00a0on the two-class grid, moving up to 18th\u00a0in the early laps of the two-hour race on the storied circuit. He ran a clean opening stint, setting a consistent pace despite the challenge of rapid tire degradation on the California circuit. Feeling relaxed behind the wheel and ready for an extended stint,\u00a0DePew\u00a0was called in to pit lane to take advantage of the\u00a0race\u2019s\u00a0first\u00a0caution period.<\/p>\n

Running ninth with 54-minutes remaining in the two-hour event, the team elected to bring Liddell in for his final fuel stop.<\/p>\n

He returned to the race\u00a015th\u00a0in GS but\u00a027th\u00a0overall, mired in heavy TCR traffic. While Liddell battled back to eighth, the remainder of the race ran under the green flag as Liddell\u2019s tires were worn out in the closing minutes \u2013 costing him two positions on the final two laps.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just went out there, hit my marks and got more comfortable,\u201d\u00a0DePew\u00a0said. \u201cI was dealing with tire degradation a little, and was figuring out what the car could do. I stayed out of trouble, and felt really good for my first time here in a race car. I\u2019m really pleased, and a lot of that\u2019s due to Robin. He\u2019s given me a lot of tools. This is a whole different level of racing from what I\u2019ve experienced. Everything\u2019s got to be perfect to be even remotely on pace. Also, I was much more relaxed this weekend \u2013 I could have driven for over\u00a0an hour.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liddell moved up to 11th\u00a0on the pit exchange, and worked his way up to ninth on the lap following the restart. At that point, the team anticipated the way the race would develop and\u00a0called their driver back to the pits to top off on fuel.<\/p>\n

Having put superior pit strategy to work in recent races with two victories and two fourth-place finishes this season, the team was looking to make the most of the call to pit lane.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe ran a decent race, but it was a bit frustrating at the end,\u201d Liddell said. \u201cThis is never a track that our cars perform very well on, but the balance was quite good this weekend. Frank drove a great stint at the beginning\u00a0and\u00a0at a track he doesn\u2019t really know. We were going to leave him out until he ran out of gas, but we got the yellow and of\u00a0course we came in. Our pit stop was really good, and we made up several positions in the pits.\u201d<\/p>\n

However on Saturday, the long green-flag run \u2013 combined with hot 86-degree conditions \u2013 led to worn tires during the closing laps.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe made a good restart, and we decided to pit and do the service to get us to the end,\u201d continued Liddell.\u00a0\u201cBut I\u2019m not sure that really played out in our favor and I just didn\u2019t have enough grip for the last ten laps. Lessons learned from that. The car\u2019s in one piece and the guys did a good job though so I\u2019m happy enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 2019 Michelin Pilot Challenge will come to a close with the Fox Factory 120 at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta in a two-hour race on Friday, Oct. 11.<\/p>\n

Additional updates via:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/rebelrockracing.co<\/a><\/u>
\nhttps:\/\/twitter.com\/rebelrockracing<\/a><\/u>
\nhttps:\/\/www.instagram.com\/rebelrockracing\/<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MONTEREY, CA (15\u00a0September 2019) \u2013 Rebel Rock Racing drivers Frank\u00a0DePew\u00a0and Robin Liddell took a hard-fought 10th\u00a0place finish in Saturday\u2019s Laguna\u00a0Seca\u00a0120 at\u00a0WeatherTech\u00a0Raceway Laguna\u00a0Seca, the penultimate round of [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1578,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1577"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1579,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1577\/revisions\/1579"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}