{"id":6071,"date":"2023-06-19T14:04:40","date_gmt":"2023-06-19T18:04:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/?p=6071"},"modified":"2023-06-19T14:04:40","modified_gmt":"2023-06-19T18:04:40","slug":"sean-creech-motorsport-back-in-action-at-watkins-glen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/2023\/06\/19\/sean-creech-motorsport-back-in-action-at-watkins-glen\/","title":{"rendered":"Sean Creech Motorsport back in action at Watkins Glen"},"content":{"rendered":"

14 weeks have passed since the LMP3 class last raced at Sebring in March, with five events of the seven-race schedule remaining from June\u00a0to October\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"JUPITER, Fla.<\/strong> (19 June 2023)\u00a0\u2013 According to the calendar, the 2023 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship is more than halfway done. But for Sean Creech Motorsport (SCM) and the rest of the LMP3 class field, the season only now begins in earnest, with Sunday\u2019s Sahlen\u2019s Six Hours of the Glen at Watkins Glen International (10:40 a.m., Peacock\/USA).<\/p>\n

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Lance Willsey and Jo\u00e3o Barbosa will pilot the No. 33 SCM Focal One Ligier JS P320, joined once again by Chilean Nico Pino \u2013 who at age 18, became the youngest driver to stand on the podium at the 24 Hours of Le Mans (earning a third-place finish with his Duqueine team). Pino will see WGI for the first time this week, but sim work has been as close to real life as possible now that the No. 33 SCM Ligier is on the iRacing<\/a>\u00a0program.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been training, both physically and on the sim,\u201d said Pino. \u201cI\u2019ve been looking at data, watching on-boards and doing sim racing \u2013 especially now that the car is on iRacing! It\u2019s a great reference on how the track lays out and how the car behaves. It\u2019s very cool, I\u2019ve never been able to drive my exact car! It\u2019s great that anyone in the world can race the exact same car I\u2019ve driven.\u201d<\/p>\n

The LMP3 class has only run two race weekends in 2023 (Daytona and Sebring), with Sebring the only points paying race \u2013 though with 36 hours of racing completed, that\u2019s more than some racing series contest in an entire season. It\u2019s been 14 weeks since the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, nearly as long as the 16 weeks in between the 2022 season finale at Road Atlanta and the 2023 Roar Before the Rolex 24. The WeatherTech series will contest five races between now and Petit Le Mans<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

in October, which will mark the finale for the LMP3 class in the premier IMSA series.<\/p>\n

SCM team members have kept busy over the three months, working with teams competing in a myriad of sports car series \u2013 including the recent 24 Hours of Le Mans. The crew reunited two weeks ago at Watkins Glen to test the No. 30 VP Racing SportsCar Challenge and the No. 33 WeatherTech series cars, with Willsey and Barbosa sharing the wheel.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a very long break!\u201d said Barbosa. \u201cIt was nice to be back behind the wheel of the Ligier, it only took a couple of laps to get back into the groove. The crew did a great job at the test \u2013 the car is very good and it\u2019s such a fun track to drive. It was uncharacteristically cold and cloudy at the test, and with the Canadian wildfire smoke, it made for very strange conditions. But we have plenty of options for this weekend. We didn\u2019t do as many laps as we would have liked, with the third day ended early, but I feel as though we\u2019re ready.\u201d<\/p>\n

The crew worked through several challenges at the test, including unseasonably cold temperatures and significant smoke from the Canadian wildfires. Fighting through the air quality issues, the team worked through a checklist of setup options \u2013 both for the cool conditions at the test, and for the far more likely warmer temperatures that would greet them later in the month.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cIt was a good chance for everyone to get back in the swing of things,\u201d said team principal Sean Creech. \u201cFor the crew, it was a chance to make sure everything was hooked up, refamiliarize themselves with setting up and tearing down, working on the car, making changes. Same for Lance and Joao \u2013 they haven\u2019t been in the car since March, so it was good to have almost three days to bang the rust off.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have plenty of data coming out of the test,\u201d continued Creech. \u201cLike Joao said \u2013 we can race this car. We\u2019ll tweak it in practice on the race weekend, especially since it was significantly colder at the test than it will be this week. But the car has good pace as it is now.\u201d<\/p>\n

SCM thanks team partner Focal One for its continued support.<\/p>\n

The Sahlen\u2019s Six Hours of the Glen takes the green flag Sunday at 10:40 a.m. Eastern. The race will be broadcast live in the U.S. on Peacock TV and the USA Network. International viewers can watch via IMSA.tv, with IMSA Radio also available at IMSA.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

14 weeks have passed since the LMP3 class last raced at Sebring in March, with five events of the seven-race schedule remaining from June\u00a0to October\u00a0 JUPITER, [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6076,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-sean-creech-motorsports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6071","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=6071"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6078,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6071\/revisions\/6078"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}