DeltaWing Racing Cars earns top-10 finish in Canada

Bowmanville, Ont. (July 12, 2015) – It was a solid and eventful day for the Claro/TracFone DeltaWing Racing Cars team, as the DeltaWing Coupe survived more than its share of bumps and bruises on the way to a top-10 finish in the Mobil 1 SportsCar Grand Prix Presented by Hawk Performance.

Drivers Katherine Legge and Memo Rojas managed the slick racing conditions and a few taps from fellow competitors to earn their first checkered flag of the season, an eighth-place finish in the Prototype class and ninth overall. The DeltaWing Coupe was competitive for much of the early going, pacing within a half second of the leaders and setting its quickest lap of the weekend on lap 47, with a time of 1:11.089 around Canadian Tire Motorsports Park's 2.459-mile circuit.

Legge birthday

Legge, who celebrated her birthday on race day, started the race in seventh position. Early on, the car sustained damage to the left rear wheel after contact with one of the GTLM Porsches. Later in the race, a prototype ran into the back of the coupe, causing damage to the tunnel structure. Rojas, taking the wheel on lap 90, brought the car successfully home despite the affect the damage had on the handling.

Next up for the Claro/TracFone DeltaWing Racing Cars team will be race eight of the 2015 TUDOR United SportsCar Championship, the Continental Tire Road Race Showcase at historic Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. Qualifying will be live on IMSA.com and the IMSA app on Saturday, August 8 from 4:35 to 6:10 p.m., with the race live on FOX Sports 1 Sunday from 3:00 – 6:00 p.m. All times Eastern.

Katherine Legge: “That was one of the most eventful races that I’ve done. Early on, we were hit by a Porsche and that caused some damage. The crew did a great job under yellow to get us back out there. I also got hit by a couple of DP cars. There was some bodywork damage, which made it difficult for us since we get our downforce from the undertray of the car. But the car felt good early on, we’ve made big steps forward. It was great to get a finish; the team has worked so hard! It was a good birthday gift.”

Memo Rojas: “I’m very happy for the entire team, to finish our first race. We had a good car but we had several incidents with other cars that really changed the handling. I worked hard to keep the car in good shape to the finish. I’m hoping this can be a good change of fortune for us; the entire team has worked so hard to improve the handling of the car. We had a good weekend, always moving forward, so to finish puts a nice cap on that. Now we go to Road America, a track that’s been good for us, so hopefully we have some momentum!”

Team Manager Tim Keene: I’m very proud of everyone on the team. All the hard work they’ve been doing is finally starting to pay off. We had a very good car early on but unfortunately, we had some contact with one of the GTLM cars. We recovered from that but several other cars ran into that back of us. We took some damage to the gearbox and differential, but we won’t know the extent of the damage until we get back to the shop. If we’d had that kind of contact with the previous gearbox, it most likely would have ended our day, so that’s very encouraging. We’re looking on the positive side: we’ve made gains in the right direction and we’re looking forward to getting to Elkhart Lake, somewhere we’ve had some good success.”

DeltaWing Racing