WeatherTech Racing drivers Cooper MacNeil (Hinsdale, Ill.) and Leh Keen (Charleston, S.C.) will start from the fourth row in the GTD class for Sunday’s TUDOR United SportsCar Championship Oak Tree Grand Prix at Virginia International Raceway.
Hot, dirty track conditions played a role in this afternoon’s 15-minute GTD qualifying session. In fact, most cars were nearly two seconds off this morning practice times. These conditions led to MacNeil needing most of the session to turn his fastest lap of 1:50.882 (106.167 mph) in the No. 22 WeatherTech Racing Porsche.
“The WeatherTech Porsche has been decent this weekend,” MacNeil said. “We’ve been fighting a few things here and there. The brakes are really good, which we haven’t had since we bought the car. So, that’s a positive. The track was hotter and dirtier this afternoon for qualifying. It was dirtier from the race before our qualifying session. It wasn’t ideal conditions for us. We’ve got our work cut out for us tomorrow. But, I think we should have a good race car.”
Keen says now that the brake issues are resolved, the crew has worked hard to adjust the chassis accordingly.
“We’ve been struggling with the chassis all weekend,” Keen said. “We really like our new brake package that we tested a couple of weeks ago. That showed us some the areas in the chassis we need to work on. Now that we’ve got the brakes out of the way, we’ve been working really hard on the chassis. [We made] lots of changes today and yesterday.
“The track seemed to go off big time out there. Cooper seemed to adapt to it the best. Some of the guys were one and a half seconds off where they were this morning. Cooper was half of that. A lot of changes were made before qualifying. Hopefully, that’s a positive for us in tomorrow’s race. I think there are still a couple of little things to do. But, all in all, we’re having a good weekend. We had a good run here last year and we’ll try to do it again.”
“Cooper had a solid run,” Team Owner Alex Job said. “Almost all of the GTD cars were slower in this afternoon’s qualifying than they were in this morning’s practice. While Cooper went slower in qualifying than this morning’s practice, his lap times were not nearly as ‘off’ as the driver’s times ahead of him. This tells me that some of the changes we made this morning worked and we’ve made some good progress on the car.”
Fans can catch all of the live racing action from the Oak Tree Grand Prix at VIR starting at 1 p.m. (ET) Sunday, Aug. 23 on Fox Sports 1.