The second race weekend of 2024 is the first of two trips to Road Atlanta in March. The SCCA Hoosier Super Tour event is a great opportunity to shake off the off-season and get some seat time before the opening weekend of the FRP series.
As usual, the March weather in Atlanta was all over the place. Thursday’s test day was beautiful before clouds and cooler weather started to settle in. A last-minute schedule change shifted the rotation from practice, qualifying, race, race to two qualifying sessions and 2 races. The FF/F6/FV group was scheduled as the final group for this race weekend, so the first qualifying session was Friday before the rain came.
Mateo set the fastest lap for the FF class and 3rd overall for the group in the Friday qualifying session. Second qualifying was Saturday morning after storms came through. There was still light rain and heavy mist through lunch, so the 2nd qualifying session was wet. No one improved on their times from Friday, so the starting order for Race 1 remained the same.
For Race 1 late Saturday afternoon, conditions had improved and the track started to dry out. The P2 F6 doesn’t Race on Saturday, so that promoted Mateo to P2 on the start. From the start of the race, Mateo opened up a gap to the field except the P1 F6. On Lap 10, Mateo inherited the overall Race lead and maintained it through the end of the 25 minute race. He won with a 42.9 second gap to second place.
Race 2 was the final race of the weekend. The starting order reverted back to the Q1 results, so Mateo started on the inside of row 2, behind 2 F6s. Mateo and the 2 F6s that started ahead of him took off and started to build a gap to the field before a safety car came out in lap 6. After a couple of yellow flag laps, Mateo had a good restart keeping up with the second place F6 for much of the rest of the race, briefly passing him on Lap 17 before being passed back on Lap 18. He finished third overall, but first amount the FFs, outpacing the second place FF by 28.6 seconds.
Mateo will be back at Road Atlanta March 22-25 to open the Formula Race Promotions season.
