SCC: Millville: Burrows, Hopwood race notes

Burrows and Hopwood Lead Acura Charge at New Jersey Motorsports Park

Big rally to move from 25th to 7th on unfamiliar track despite questionable penalty

Millville, NJ (30 August, 2008)--Trevor Hopwood and Adam Burrows scored the best finish of all Acura runners in the Grand-Am KONI Challenge Supercar Life 150 at New Jersey Motorsports Park on Sunday with a run to seventh place after starting the race from 25th on the starting grid in the No. 76 Fischer Skis Compass360 Racing Acura TSX.

The outcome was disappointing for the duo, as they were looking to build on a hot streak of races that has seen them win two of the last three KONI events. But some setbacks beyond their control stacked the deck against them before they made a real rally to score their 7th finishing position despite a penalty.

The race weekend was the first visit to the new 2.25-mile track for both Burrows and Hopwood, who started the race with only a handful of laps on the track from qualifying under his belt after a motor setback in practice kept him from getting any significant time on the track before the race went green.

As expected, the combination of a huge field and some facility short-comings inherent for a newly built track conspired to create over an hour and a half of yellow-flag running for the two and a half hour race.

Hopwood started the race from deep in the pack, and had made strong progress in the opening laps, only to be set back on a restart when he was penalized for being out of line on the restart. The perceived infraction cost Hopwood a stop-and-go penalty, which he served with annoyance before charging back on track.

"That's the exact same call they made on us at Daytona and its insanely frustrating because if someone ahead backs off or checks up, you have the choice of hitting them, or moving to the side. That's what happened again today and we got the penalty. It's a stupid ruling. We saw with Shane's (Lewis) accident that drivers need to have the choice of where to go on restarts, so this was really frustrating because we obviously had a very fast car today."

Burrows faced a similar challenge when he took over the Acura from his fellow KONI Challenge Champion on the second yellow flag period of the race, lacking laps on the track as he headed directly into the heat of battle.

"I was actually happy to have the yellow flag laps initially because it was a good chance for me to get a look a the track," said Burrows. "So all things considered, with the motor problem keeping us from getting any laps and then a penalty, 7th from 25th isn't a bad run. This is a tight track with a lot of dust and gravel off-line which makes passing very difficult. The last twenty minutes were a real battle. I was pleased to move ahead of Kuno and a couple other guys. Pierre snuck by me when I backed off for an incident ahead that made a wall of dust that you couldn't see through. But otherwise I was pretty happy with the way we finished off this race."

-credit: sgm