The FRL FASCAR series stayed in Florida this week and setup camp at Homestead Speedway for the second race of the 2021 series. Eleven cars made their way to the South Florida track that saw quite a heated battle for top lap times during testing that occurred throughout the week leading up to the race itself. Four different drivers held the number 1 spot on the leaderboard at various times during the week. Blake Wild found the sweetest spot in his setup and laid down a blistering lap time of 29.580, a time that no one was able to rival for the rest of the week.
The starting grid was set based of finishing positions in the previous Daytona race. Andrew Steppat and Seth Jensen lined up on the front row to take the green flag with nine other drivers behind them. Most of lap one was pretty clean as everyone seemed to be doing their best to get a clean start. Ethan Maestri jumped ahead of Brandon early, but gave the position back to him when it was thought he had passed the #88 Ford before the start/finish line. Brandon would experience a bit of over-rotation in Turn 4, brushing the wall and doing a perfect slide into the pit area, dropping himself a lap down.
Early indications looked like Seth Jensen and Andrew Steppat would carry their Daytona battle for first place straight into this event. But the #6 Ford eventually began to fall back as Travis Billingsley and Ethan Maestri began marching their Toyota's forward. Caution was declared on the track on several occasions as Seth Jensen, Preston Liberatore, Blake Wild and David Dodson found the outside walls and crossed wheels with others.
Much of the later half of the race was run under caution, which allowed pit cycles to remain pretty consistent. On the next to last restart after caution, Ethan Maestri was able to move between Andrew Steppat and Travis Billingsley just passed the start/finish line to sail the #3 Toyota into the lead, while the #1 and #18 settled their race. The last restart saw Ethan get a clean start and he was able to hold off a close race from Andrew Steppat to claim the victory. Paul Maestri, in the #7 MBR team car was able to just edge out Travis Billingsley to take third place.
Andrew Steppat emerges from the second race of the series with a 16 point lead over Ethan Maestri and Seth Jensen, who are tied for second in points with 76. Travis Billingsley slips to fourth behind them with 75 points. The points race will continue with the next event at Road America on February 14th.
No comments:
Post a Comment