With the two biggest endurance races of the season in the history books, the DeltaWing Racing team will step back from the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship, skipping Round 3 at Long Beach in favor of returning for Round 4 at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.

“Long Beach has never been on our agenda,” team manager Dave Price told RACER. “It’s not a circuit we’re well-suited to. Don made the decision early in the year that we’d miss Long Beach, and we haven’t got a terrific turning circle with the car, so that’s something to consider, and it’s not just about the possible damage that can be done on a street course.  We’ve got a seven-race program and we’ll be at Monterey next.”

The team’s DWC13 chassis set a respectable eighth-fastest qualifying time at Sebring and was quite competitive at times as its drivers fought with higher downforce P2s and DPs.

“It’s been a lot of work finding the speed we want since we began running our own team at Sebring last year, and I agree, we have come a long way,” Price added. “We thought we’d do a 1:55 flat, we did a 1:55.4, so that was close to our target and we’ve been making improvements on pace and reliability. We ran close to some of the DPs at times, but if you look at the faster corners, we don’t make as much as downforce to stay with them, so we were never going to be matched at some sections. Overall, we were pleased, however.”

The No. 0 DeltaWing almost completed 11 of Sebring’s 12 hours, although that 11-hour total was not run consecutively. Reliability continues to be an area of improvement for the Georgia-based constructor, but the problems that were encountered at Sebring, by comparison to other races, were smaller and far less catastrophic than some in the past. Failing to finish an endurance race is always hard to accept, but the team, as Price shares, is making progress.
“Reliability is what we spend more time on than anything else,” he explained. “The engine is where we want it, although the gearbox still presents some issues. It’s little niggling things, and it’s such a light car that you’re always going to be at risk on the harsher tracks. We learn from races like Sebring to improve reliability, and we got the two big races out of the way.               

“We had an alternator fail, but to change it, we have to take the floor off, so that took time. And then later in the race, the circuit’s roughness pointed out some weak points, but we’ve made big inroads over the last year. It’s not a brutal car like the DP, and it relies on its technology to make speed, so when you’re running one car, you’re responsible for developing it alone and things like making the car completely reliable takes longer than one desires.”​