Starting off on the Wright foot: Adelson and Skeer dominate to win season-opener of Fanatec GT World Challenge at Sonoma
By Kyle Foster, photo courtesy of Eric Thompson (Shamboozled.com)
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Sonoma-There is no better way to start the season than with a win. It gets everything going in the right direction and can lead to plenty of success.
On Saturday at Sonoma Raceway, this is what the Wright Motorsports team with drivers Adam Adelson and Elliott Skeer did as they won the season-opener of the Fanatec GT World Challenge, powered by AWS.
They won the race from the pole by a whopping 15 seconds in the 90-minute race to claim the checkers in the opener at the 2.5-mile road course.
With such a dominant win, they now have a championship on their mind after moving up from the Pro-am to the Pro class in 2024.
“Definitely, that’s why we test,” Skeer said of the dominant win. “That’s why we go hard in the practices to truly get everything we can out of it. The Wright Motorsports team doesn’t know any different. And in a weekend like this with so many variables, it paid off. They gave us an unbelievable car.”
Last season, this duo picked up 6 wins and 7 podiums to show they were one of the best teams in the garage area of the GT World Challenge America. That led them to finish second in the Pro-Am championship last season. This was their first win in the Pro category as well.
The win also means they’ll start from the pole in the second and final race of the weekend on Sunday afternoon, which is key because the repave has made the track very fast and to the point where track position is of the most importance.
Finishing second was the Crowdstrike by Riley team with drivers George Kurtz and Colin Bruan. They were the highest-finishing Pro-Am team as well.
“It’s always great to win a home race,” Kurtz said of the second-place finish and being the top-finishing Pro-Am team in the 90-minute race. “We have so many guests and Crowdstrikers here.”
Both these teams received 25 points by winning their class races.
Rounding out the top 4 was a pair of ST Racing teams. The third-place finishing duo was Varun
Choksey and Bill Auberlen who were in the Pro class.
Then, Samatha Tan and Neil Verhagen brought it home fourth which was good for second in Pro-Am. Both ST Racing BMWs got 18 points to begin the new campaign.
Round 2 will end the weekend of sportscar racing at Sonoma Raceway with a green flag at 2:15 lasting till 3:45. This race and all other races during the weekend can be watched live on YouTube.
The track holds up after day one of racing
It’s been a wild week for the sportscar teams on hand at Sonoma Raceway. Fresh off an extensive offseason repaved, the track ran into issues during testing ahead of racing this weekend.
Nearly the whole track had to be repaved in a fast amount of time. This meant there were no practices on Friday, as originally scheduled.
While it is not known the cause of the pavement coming up, constant rain could have had a lot to do with it. The fact the day went on without a hitch is a step in the right direction. The track had to repave turns 2, 4, 7, 9, and 11. However, 11 was the biggest issue with asphalt that came up.
The Fanatec GT World Challenge is almost like a dry run before the big show in June. They are the heaviest cars that will be on track before the NASCAR weekend.
