DeltaWing: Straight line speed and fuel economy are highlights of the day at Laguna Seca

MONTEREY, Calif. – The DeltaWing Racing Cars team showed its poise, speed and strategy today, as Katherine Legge and Andy Meyrick worked their way through the field to a top 10 position until mechanical issues brought an early end to their Continental Tire Grand Prix of Monterey.

The TUDOR United Sports Car Championship event at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca saw a unique two-race concept on Sunday. The huge field, which had practiced together for two days, were split into a pair of two-hour races, with the DeltaWing coupe starting in the 23-car Prototype and GT Le Mans field.

The team planned to take advantage of the DeltaWing coupe’s fuel economy and field-leading straight line speed with a one-stop pit strategy. Legge started the race, muscling her way through the field, holding the fast lap of 1:21.229 in the race’s early going and putting the coupe in eighth position by the end of her stint. Meyrick took over on lap 44, quickly boosting the car’s quick lap time to 1:20.828. Both drivers were pleased with the car’s performance in traffic, its pace and speed, despite the transmission issues that ended the day on lap 66.

Katherine Legge: “One of the real advantages of this car is that it comes up to speed quite quickly compared to other cars. It was really good on line – off line, it was tricky to get past the GT cars. There was a great deal of sand on the track from earlier races, so you couldn’t pass in the corners, but we were able to use the straight line speed advantage of the DeltaWing coupe to our advantage to pass cars. We had planned a one-stop strategy, so the last 10 laps of my stint were really about tire management.”

Andy Meyrick: “To come from the back of the grid to the top seven shows that we had good pace, so there are some great strengths there. Our fuel strategy really put us in contention, since everyone else had to come in for a splash and dash and we didn’t. There are a lot of encouraging elements about the race today – the car was strong and consistent, so we’ll take that and keep working.”

Team Manager David Price: “We planned a one-stop strategy from the start, just hoping there wouldn’t be a yellow flag. We were fine on fuel, even with the competitive race pace. There are a great many positives we can take from the race – we had a race pace close to the leaders, we were quickest in a straight line, we had good fuel mileage.”

DeltaWing Racing