Rebel Rock Racing returned to the scene of their greatest victory as the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge season continued with the Road America 120 on Saturday
Drivers Frank DePew and Robin Liddell wrote their names in the IMSA history books at the Wisconsin circuit in 2019 as they came from fourth place to Victory Lane by just 0.070 seconds inside the final three corners of a scintillating wet race.
They were back on the top step of the podium last year as their title challenge gathered momentum, but it was not to be a third victory for the duo this year as they instead battled hard to a 12th-place finish.
Having not been able to test the brand new 2024 Aston Martin Vantage GT3 at the track, valuable seat time was interrupted by numerous red flags throughout both sessions. This resulted in DePew getting no running time at all in Practice 2.
The team owner then qualified on the 11th row for the team from DeLand, FL. Despite the lack of testing and an issue with tire pressures, Frank turned in some strong opening laps in the British-Built 4.0 V8 twin-turbo.
The eight-time IMPC race winner quickly settled into a rhythm on the magnificent four-mile track on which he and Robin have twice been victorious in the series.
He was up three places to 19th by one-quarter distance, but minor contact with another car at Turn Five shortly afterwards not only cost #71 time, but also caused damage to the front bodywork.
A slick pitstop, made – along with most of the field – under Full-Course Yellow conditions – enabled Robin to climb aboard just beyond one-third distance as the field bunched together.
Quickly up to 15th, Robin pitted with one hour to go to take on enough fuel to reach the finish. The 2017 champion had risen as high as sixth before backing off his pace to save fuel in anticipation that the race would remain fully green and falling to 16th. With fuel concerns gone after the late Full Course Yellow, he sprinted at the end and climbed to 12th.
The duo remain sixth in the Championship standings, 400 points behind the leaders as they head to Round 8 at Virginia International Raceway on August 24th.
Robin Liddell said: Despite the lack of testing and all of the interruptions during practice, the balance of the car wasn’t too bad in the race. We seem to be struggling with tire pressures and in terms of the race strategy, I think we pitted a little early. We still haven’t really got our fuel numbers as precise as we would like. I was in a situation where I was saving fuel while the cars around me were not.
We are a little disappointed with the result, finishing outside the top 10. I think if we had run a marginally different strategy, we probably would have finished in the top six, possibly even on the podium. It’s a little frustrating. But you know, in the end, it was a bit of a learning curve weekend, and obviously we’re looking forward to VIR, where we’ve got two test days and the VP weekend again, so I’m hoping we can bounce back and have a stronger result at Frank’s home race.
Frank DePew said: The weekend did not go exactly as planned but we did hold on to sixth spot in the standings. I’m getting more comfortable with the car. The front end was a handful during my stint, anytime that I needed to brake deeper into a corner to maintain a position, I was dealing with mid-corner understeer, which made it a little difficult to get back to throttle, and kind of hard to manage. The big takeaway from the weekend is that the platform we have is excellent and we just need to test as often as we can to fully get our heads around things like our fuel mileage etc.
Road America is such a fantastic race track, it’s so much fun to compete there. We are still hopeful that we can have some good results at the last three races and stay in the hunt for at least a top three finish in the championship, but we would love to win a couple of races starting in a couple of weeks at VIR.