Postcards from the Paddock - New Orleans
New Orleans is one of my favorite cities to visit, so when NOLA Motorsports Park was added to the SRO America calendar last year as a last-minute replacement I was thrilled. After two years on the schedule, I can safely say that I look forward to the trip at least as much for racing product on the track as I do the excuse to visit the French Quarter. Simply put: NOLA and sports car racing are a great fit.
Photo by Audrey Myrehn
The track may not be an all-time classic like Road America or Laguna Seca but just about every driver I spoke with acknowledged it is a challenging place. An interesting mix of tight corners and the high-speed esses coupled with some surprisingly bumpy braking zones create enough challenge to keep even the top drivers on their toes, doubly so when the track is wet.
As was the case in the first trip to NOLA for SRO America last year, rain did have an impact. Race 1 for Fanatec GT World Challenge America powered by AWS was delayed and the opening stint was run on rain tires, while one of the Pirelli GT4 America races was postponed altogether due to the rain and a tight schedule. If there's a down side to the circuit, which has some impressive facilities and in many ways seems to be a great match with the SRO portfolio of series, it's just how much of an effect rain can have on a weekend. The track, like the city of New Orleans itself, is below sea level, and any significant rainfall leads to dangerous levels of standing water.
In every other way, though, the weekend was a showcase for SRO America and the teams and drivers that race in its championships. It is my sincere hope that the track remains a fixture on the schedule for years to come!
Photo by Audrey Myrehn
Up next for me is the GMR Grand Prix at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. I love “working from home” at my home track, and it doesn't get much better than calling IMS your office for a month. Can't wait to get the Month of May underway!
Now, some observations from the racing at NOLA Motorsports Park and beyond:
Fanatec GT World Challenge powered by AWS feels like a brand-new series this year with so many new teams and drivers entering the championship but it's the returning pairing of George Kurtz and Colin Braun that have had the best start to the season. The Riley Motorsports duo scored their second overall win of the season as a Pro-Am pairing on Sunday in a race that showcased the team's strategic acumen as well as Kurtz's development as a driver.
The team read the tea leaves perfectly, elongating Braun's opening stint at the risk of a yellow scuppering their plans. The yellow didn't come and the Texan's breakneck pace on used tires allowed them to leapfrog into the lead from third at the beginning of the pit cycle. Then it came down to Kurtz to hold the spot on multiple restarts against not just his fellow Am drivers, but also the Silver-rated drivers in the Pro lineups. Kurtz was up to the challenge and the pairing finds itself in a strong position to chase a long-awaited GT3 championship in SRO America.
Race 1 of the weekend was won overall by RS1's Eric Filgueiras and Stevan McAleer. Filguerias, in his first season of GT3 racing, has now won the pole in both of his GT3 qualifying sessions and drove a commanding opening stint. McAleer showed his experience in his time behind the wheel, fending off multiple challengers in the final 30 minutes and ultimately holding on for the pair's second win of the season.
The debut of the weekend belonged to French Aston Martin factory driver Valentin Hasse Clot who paired with Derek DeBoer for TRG over the weekend. VHC had made just two previous starts in SRO America. Those came in Pirelli GT4 America at Indianapolis in 2021 alongside the late Paul Terry and showed incredible pace in that occasion. They were supposed to run a full season last year before Terry unexpectedly passed away over the offseason, which an emotional Haase Clot referenced in his interview after securing pole for Race 2. He led his entire stint and ultimately finished second in Pro-Am. Perhaps more importantly, it sounds like he's secured a spot with the team for the remaining races that Ross Gunn cannot attend. Gunn was with the team at Sonoma but was unavailable last weekend due to F1 simulator commitments for Mercedes.
We only had a single Pirelli GT4 America race last weekend but it had enough drama to make up for the second race being postponed to a later event. The highlight of the weekend across every class that competed was Michai Stephens' audacious lunge for the lead into Turn 13 on the final lap. He was able to draw alongside race leader John Capestro-Dubets into the final sequence of corners and appeared to come out on top in a drag race to the line. At the stripe, timing and scoring said Stephens had won by a mere 0.004 seconds! The transponders are not placed in identical positions on the Mercedes (Stephens) and the BMW (Capestro-Dubets), however, and a review of still camera footage revealed that it was the BMW driver that nosed across the line first. Heartbreak for Stephens, Jesse Webb and Conquest Racing, elation for JCD, Zac Anderson, and Auto Technic, and a finish that all of us won't soon forget.
Anyone who was watching the 2014 24 Hours of Daytona will remember the overwhelming sense of dread when Memo Gidley struck the near-stationary Ferrari of Matteo Malucelli. The journey from that life-altering crash to his return to race-wining form as been anything but a straight path which makes his run of success in GT America powered by AWS all the more enjoyable to witness. Gidley won four the third time this season on Saturday in the TKO Motorsports Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo, and followed that up with win number four on Sunday. Gidley has yet to finish off the podium in six starts this year and is in firm control of the championship.
Here I'd like to add a quick “get well soon” to Gidley's car owner Dave Traitel, the man most responsible for getting him back in a competitive sports car seat.
Away from NOLA, the NTT IndyCar Series race at Barber Motorsports Park was just another reminder of the incredible on track product that the series boasts. The amount of wheel-to-wheel action, at a track initially designed for two wheels not four, made for captivating viewing. Having two viable strategy options from the start of the race just added to the fun. Firestone deserves a ton of credit for making two tire compounds with distinct strengths and weaknesses that allowed for the two- and three-stop drama to play out as evenly as it did.
The IndyCar rookie class that debuted at Barber in 2021 was the talk of that event because it included international stars Romain Grosjean, Scott McGlaughlin, and Jimmie Johnson. While Johnson has called time on his open-wheel career, two of those erstwhile rookies were once again at the forefront of the conversations, this time as Grosjean and McGlaughlin fought tooth and nail for the race win. I still think it's incredibly cool to see a former F1 podium finisher and a former V8 Supercar ace dueling the most competitive open-wheel series on the planet.
Congratulations to Christian Rasmussen on the best drive of his Indy NXT career. The Dane led all 35 laps from pole and led home an HMD Motorsports 1-2-3. Less pleasant for the team was an incident between teammates Josh Green and St. Pete winner Danial Frost on the final lap that cost HMD a potential 1-2-3-4-5 finish.
Don't go changing, Jacob Abel. His interviews are always refreshingly candid. This one with Peacock's Georgia Henneberry was no exception:
Something to Chew On
“A Chicken on Every Plate” indeed!
When talking about New Orleans, narrowing down a food recommendation to a single restaurant is not an easy task. There were no shortage of fantastic meals on this trip but my visit to Kingfish in the French Quarter is worth singling out. My wife and I stumbled upon the place in our wanderings around town Friday night and decided to give it a try. And were we ever rewarded! The atmosphere was great; we even had a New Orleans wedding party parade down the street just outside and the food was tremendous. I tried the “A Chicken on Every Plate” dish that featured some of the best fried chicken I've ever tasted in a fig and pepper jelly sauce with collard greens. Audrey tried the Seafood Au Gratin and was equally pleased. There were countless other items that looked just as tantalizing so suffice it to say we will be sure to come back on a future trip to The Big Easy.
Kingfish is located at 337 Chartres Street, New Orleans, LA, 70125