The CMS iRacing Team Endurance Series continued with Race 2 at Fuji on April 30th, and Wild Deuce Racekraft was there, poised to improve their points haul over the first race at Daytona. Rob Cottle qualified the car on grid with a 1:36.740 best lap, which was only good enough for P18 on the 18-car GT3 grid. As Fuji is a relatively short, fast track, where the team started was less important than remaining patient and successfully managing the busy, multi-class traffic through-out the day; the complete grid also included ten BMW M Hybrid V8s and nine Dallara P217s.
Starting from the back of this highly competitive field was not without its advantages; Rob was able to avoid some early race mayhem by simply hanging back a bit and letting the race unfold before pressing too much. His adept fuel management allowed the team to pit later than many others, putting them as high as P10 during the shuffle, but had them in P15 after their first stop.
The start of Chip’s stint had the P14 car within reach, but a mistake under braking in the last turn caused him to to lose too much ground to recover before race-end despite consitistently showing slightly more speed.
At the end of their 108 lap run, Wild Deuce Racekraft finished P15 with an average pace of 1:39.965 and a fastest lap, set on the final lap of the race, of 1:36.419.
Adding 16 more points to the 15 earned in Race 1 at Daytona, Wild Deuce Racekraft is solidly in 14th (out of 22 GT3 teams that have registered to compete) in the 2023 Series. The next race is at Le Mans on May 21st.