What looked to be a very promising weekend for AFS/PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports turned to be riddled with obstacles at the seventh round of the 2018 IMSA Weathertech SportsCar Championship resulting in a 9th place finish.
The event started off with positive momentum after AFS/PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports made huge progress in a very competitive qualifying session. It looked as if the 7th spot on the grid would be where Sebastian Saavedra would start the race, but a penalty sent one of the cars to the back, moving them up to 6th place. The start was fairly tame and eventually, a yellow flag blanketed the field, but the #52 Liger JS P217 stayed out, waiting to pit until another yellow where they changed the left side tires only.
AFS/PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports had the pace but struggled to fight with the leaders as the top ten maintained a tight line. In Saavedra’s second stint he came over the radio and reported he felt an issue with the car. Shortly after sharing this information, the front right tire fell off. The incident is being investigated by AFS/PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports, as it’s a very strange failure. This was followed by two more setbacks in the form of penalties, which left Gustavo Yacaman in survival mode to finish the race in 9th and continue collecting points for the IMSA Weathertech SportsCar Championship. AFS/PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports will return to racing in the United States at Road America on August 5th.
Sebastian Saavedra – Driver
“This was a very tough weekend for the team, especially after it looked so promising. Unfortunately, a lot of items throughout the race made it tough for everyone involved. We are definitely going in the right direction with the evolution of the car, but just didn’t get the results.”
Gustavo Yacaman – Driver
“It was a pretty tough weekend. We improved the car little by little until qualifying, where Sebastian did a good job and we had a great car. For warm-up and the race, we missed on the setup a bit so we didn’t have the pace to keep up with the leaders. Everything that could go wrong went wrong during the race, Sebastian lost a tire at the end of his second stint so that really set us back. We have a month before the next race so now we need to analyze and figure out how to come back stronger.”
Source. AFS/PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports
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