De La Torre Overcomes Setbacks to Score Points at Indy

Elias De La Torre IV over came a huge setback at Indianapolis Motor Speedway over the weekend to score points in the Porsche Carrera Cup North America Championship.

After running well in free practice on Friday Elias went into qualifying on Friday evening confident of securing a good Grid position for race 1 on Saturday however things went down hill dramatically on his out lap when his engine failed sending him into a spin.

The team worked into the night on Friday to replace the engine but without setting a time in qualifying it would mean Elias would start from the back of the grid.

Starting in P28 on Saturday Elias immediately started his attack and began picking off cars every lap, by lap 6 he was already up to P18. As he started lap 9 he went for a move into turn 1 to overtake two cars but had to take avoiding action as the door was closed, he took to the escape road into turn one and rejoined the track and continued to push on. By lap 24 he was now up to P13 but on the final lap was nudged back to P14 at the flag.

For race 2 on Sunday Elias would start from P19 and again would need to dig deep to secure a good result. At the start Elias immediately jumped into P15 but a safety car was required for an accident halfway around lap1. After a lengthy safety car period the race resumed with just 23 minutes remaining and by lap 11 Elias had made it into P9 with a four second gap to P8, over the next few laps Elias had closed onto the tail of P8 but by this time he was struggling with the car handling and was unable to make any further progress up the field crossing the line in an impressive P9.

Elias De La Torre IV

“This was a tough weekend because in practice we had the pace to run in the top 6 but having the engine issue destroyed any chance of that, I’m happy with the pace we had in the races and that we managed to secure points coming from the back of the grid. A big thank you to the team (JDX) for all the hard work with the engine change and giving me a fast car for the races.”