In December, the first stop of our Florida tour was at Sebring for the Lucas Oil Scholarship shootout. At the time there were no plans to return to Sebring anytime in the near future. But while there, an opportunity arose for Mateo to get his first chance to race cars.
The Lucas Oil Racing School program (Basic, Advanced & Scholarship Shootout) are focused on gaining driving and track skills but not racing. That comes in their racing program, which Mateo has not participated in.
Greg Rice from Rice Racing had an opening to run F1600 at the SCCA Super Tour Event in Sebring in January. Fortunately, Mateo already had his SCCA license so it was just a matter of extending our Florida trip an extra week.
Day 1 was practice and really just getting used to the car, shifting and the full track. All of Mateo’s sessions were shortened by black flags from incidents on the track but he made the most of them, getting faster in every session. Day 2 was another practice and qualifying session for Saturday’s race. Still improving session after session.
Saturday – Race 1: Mateo got a great start and quickly moved into 3rd after starting P5. He hung with the race leaders for several laps before a gap opened up. A yellow flag at the end tightened up the field behind the pace car, but the race ended under caution so there were no position changes at the end. Mateo finished with a podium in his first ever car race with 3rd place!
Sunday – Race 2: The forecast for Sunday had been deteriorating all week. Mateo’s group was first on the track and as they were getting ready to get in the car and head to the grid, a delay was announced. Heavy rain was coming through and brought with it lightning. The race ended up delayed by nearly 2 hours because of lightning. On the plus side, Mateo got to put his newly acquired interview skills to the test during the rain delay. (We will post the interview once get a copy)
It was still raining when Group 1 got called to the grid. Going into the start of the race, visibility was poor and standing water was commonplace. Mateo started P5 again. An incident early in the race moved him to P4. Mateo did well staying with P3 for most of the race. The gap ranged from about 1-3 seconds most of the laps, opening up a bit when they reached lap traffic. Mateo was closing quickly late in the race and managed to move into P3 on the next to last lap of the race.
2 races, 2 3rd place finishes, 2 podiums in his first car races. What a great weekend.
