AUSTIN, Texas – TPC Racing completed an intense and busy weekend at Circuit of the Americas, making their GT America powered by AWS debut with a Lamborghini.
The race weekend included a wet and rainy Saturday for GT America, followed by temperatures climbing into the upper 80s on Sunday. The weather pattern provided a masters class in professional racing for TPC Racing driver Scott Schmidt, who signed on with TPC to improve as a driver.
Schmidt and TPC Racing both made their SRO GT America debut this weekend, with Schmidt running the Lamborghini Sterling/TPC Racing Lamborghini Super Trofeo EVO in the GT2 Invitational class. For Schmidt, the opportunity to run at COTA served as a high-intensity test session in advance of the Lamborghini Super Trofeo season opener, also at COTA in just three weeks. The car was the same Super Trofeo that he will co-drive with Trevor Andrusko during the season, though configured slightly different for SRO competition. Schmidt continued to improve throughout the weekend, finishing in the top 10 overall during Sunday’s race.
Harris Levitas, Director of Race Operations: “Everybody did an incredible job this weekend at TPC Racing. We’ve been here for about a week and a half now, with the guys prepping the cars here at the track after doing some testing. I just can’t think everyone on the team enough for all of their hard work and dedication. That was our first GT America race weekend and it couldn’t have gone better. We had a great Lamborghini Sterling/TPC Racing Lamborghini Super Trofeo EVO, which is a GT2 car. We’re the first team to debut that in the United States. To have Scott Schmidt drive that as well as he did, earning a top-10 overall and yesterday setting the seventh-quickest overall lap in the rain, I’d say that’s pretty impressive.”
Scott Schmidt, Driver, #381 Lamborghini Super Trofeo EVO: “I’ve been on this track five times, but only twice in this car. The prep that we did leading up to this event, and the coaching, and TPC Racing collectively gave me a comfort that I’ve not ever had in the car before. I really wanted to start mid-pack, front-pack to see if I could hold on. I allowed two to pass and they got away from me but once we got into a few laps, we were running really good paces. My co-driver Trevor Andrusko does my coaching, but as we communicate in the trailer here you will hear from other coaches. Even though we are individual drivers with individual coaches, they collectively share data. Spencer Pumpelly was in our car and helped us set-up, and I don’t know if you get that cooperation with other pro teams. I think the other Super Trofeo teams missed an excellent opportunity to re-familiarize yourself with the track and see how the car performs. I can tell you this, by us being here we are going to be faster and much more competitive.”