Our 2034/2024 season kicked off this weekend with the Platinum Endurance Championship Round 1 from Watkins Glen for an 8 hour race.

Taylor Lane and Oliver Bunn took to the helm of our brand new Acura ARX-06 GTP car, while most of the field brought the existing Cadillac GTP car to this race. The car was engineered, both before and during the race, by new recruit Tom Marton.

Oliver took the car for qualifying and ending up taking 10th position in a competitive field, although feeling like a lap never really came together.

The early laps of the race were fraught with battles as Oliver moved his way through the field closer to the 4th/5th position he'd have hoped to qualify in. The first 3 laps saw gains of 3 position, with a further 2 positions gained by the time lap 10 rolled around – despite an early pitstop due to a pre-race fuelling error, things were looking good.

Signs of what was to come, however, started to show when the first curb of the infamous bus-stop chicane launched the car into a near spin twice in the second stint, only kept out of the wall with some sublime car control and a not insignificant helping of luck.

That luck didn't last forever, though. The curb bit again early into Taylor's first stint in the car, although this time for the car in front. They lost control and there wasn't a lot Taylor could do to avoid contact and a trip to the pits to fix some damage. The same process was necessary a while later when the car was launched again over the curb and into the wall, and another time for Oliver for good measure when he returned to the car.

Despite these massive setbacks, and by now being over 20 laps down on the lead, the driver duo knuckled down and focussed on the second half of the race.

That second half was executed almost flawlessly, with the team climbing back up to finish 7th position. Importantly, they managed to complete enough laps to be the final car to complete over 90% of the distance covered by the leader and grabbing the points that went with that.

Overall, clearly a first half that we'd all rather not have happened, but a second half that we can draw a lot of inspiration from in future races. Up next are IVRA Endurance and Clubsport races, before round 2 of PEC. You can see all the information on all of those and more on the events page.