DANVILLE, VA (10 Oct. 2021) \u2013 Rebel Rock Racing\u2019s Frank DePew led the first laps of his IMSA career at the midway point at his home track on Sunday, while a late charge by teammate Robin Liddell fell just 4.661-seconds short of victory on the way to a fourth-place finish in the Virginia is for Racing Lovers Grand Prix at Virginia International Raceway.<\/p>\n
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Winners at Sebring early in the season, the team rebounded from bad luck by sitting out a race to work on the No. 71 Urban Grid Chevrolet Camaro GT4.R, taking the time for extra preparation and testing.<\/p>\n
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The effort paid off on Sunday, with the team scoring its second-best finish of the 2021 IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge campaign with only one race remaining.<\/p>\n
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\u201cFrank did a helluva job since we came here testing,\u201d Liddell said. \u201cHe did a super job then, and he\u2019s really got his head together for this event. The strategy played out to where he was able to get out in front, which was great fun for him. He held his own and did a super job. He did everything he needed to do, and I think he\u2019s moved to a new level of performance.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The team elected to divide the race into two halves. DePew ran 12th<\/sup>\u00a0at the 40 minute mark, and stayed out when the other contenders pitted, cycling to the race lead for the first time in his IMSA career. DePew led five laps, pitting under the first caution of the race and turning the car over to Liddell with one hour remaining.<\/p>\n \n \u201cAt the end of the day, I\u2019m a very aggressive personality,\u201d DePew said. \u201cSome of that shows up in the race car, and it\u2019s led to some car damage. Some of that damage hurts us in the race, but recently some damage showed up that we didn\u2019t know about. We\u2019ve had the capability all year, but it\u2019s been a difficult year. I\u2019m just learning to be patient in the car, and try to use my skills the best I can, let everything unfold around me and stay out of trouble. That\u2019s what I did today. The car is better than it was, but we\u2019ve still down on BOP and that showed today \u2013 we couldn\u2019t get around the Audis, Astons, Mclarens, and BMWs, even if we got a good run on them. We decided we weren\u2019t going to have another DNF today; we ran a good race and we were happy.<\/p>\n \n \u201cI wish I could say I earned first place!\u201d said DePew. \u201cBut I circled to first because of fuel strategy. I think I was driving with the top seven or eight, and I\u2019m happy with that.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Liddell rejoined the race in 11th<\/sup>, and quickly began moving his way up through the field. He was seventh when the second caution waved with just under 34 minutes remaining. Liddell moved up to fourth with 21 minutes remaining.<\/p>\n \n \u201cThe team did a great job and was flawless, but the yellows hurt us,\u201d Liddell said. \u201cThe first yellow hurt us because of our strategy, and then how those guys ran those laps at the end on the fuel they had, there\u2019s no way they could have done that [without the second yellow]. The bottom line is we didn\u2019t have the overall pace and we struggled for top speed. At the end we struggled for grip, and we couldn\u2019t defend against those guys who got around me. I just didn\u2019t have the car under me to drive to the front. But ultimately, I\u2019m very happy with a good, solid result. P-4 and the car\u2019s in one piece.\u201d<\/p>\n \n For DePew \u2013 who resides in the Richmond area \u2013 it was very satisfying to lead the race in front of family and friends.<\/p>\n \n \u201cVIR\u2019s my home track, and I\u2019ve been going at it here for quite a while,\u201d DePew said. \u201cI\u2019ve got to give a shout out to Connie Nyholm, track principal and Kerrigan Smith, VIR President for making this one of the best motorsports tracks in the country, and retains it old school intrigue and difficulty. \u00a0They\u2019ve transformed this track into a World Class track that hasn\u2019t lost any of its intrigue that it had previously. They have made it way safer, without losing the DNA of the track \u2013 which is amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Rebel Rock will be looking to build on today\u2019s momentum when the IMSA season wraps up on Friday, Nov. 12, with the Fox Factory 120 during the Motul Petit Le Mans weekend at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" DANVILLE, VA (10 Oct. 2021) \u2013 Rebel Rock Racing\u2019s Frank DePew led the first laps of his IMSA career at the midway point at his home [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3833,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,9,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-feature","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3832","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=3832"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3836,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3832\/revisions\/3836"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}