Hard Charger win for Frost at FR America’s VIR
July 19, 2020 – Virginia: A fleet of Formula Regional Americas Championship Powered by Honda drivers invaded Virginia International Raceway for the third-annual Andy Scriven Memorial Race Weekend July 17-19.
Sixteen drivers from eight countries made up the grid for the first triple-header event of the season. The weekend was in honor of the late Ligier Automotive chassis designer Andy Scriven. Scriven was instrumental in the Ligier JS F3 and bringing the first Halo-equipped chassis to North America.
Frost, racing the number 68 for Andretti Autosport, faced a series of setbacks, starting from a misunderstanding over the tyres to be used, a broken intercooler hose causing a serious loss in boost, a bolt issue with the steering arm, and potential overheating of the ECU, the latter which caused many cars to stall on the track. The team did their best and worked overnight to rectify the steering issues, with added precautions taken based on their past experiences.
We had a bolt loosen on the left front steering arm that allowed the left front to toe in and made the car hard to drive. In the past, we find this has happened because of the curbs so last night we made some steps we use on our other cars to secure the camber bolts. We did go back over the starts with Danial as the standing start was awful and both restarts were not what we would preferred. We did stay late last night but it was because all the cars ECUs were over heating, we had done some thing to improve that at the shop and our ECU was only 1deg over the limit.
– Don Lambert, Team Manager, Andretti Autosport
That didn’t stop the Singaporean from going for what he wanted the minute he got back onto the track. This proved to be harder than it seemed as all the cars were equally powered by Honda, levelling the playing field to quite a tight formation, which put a lot of pressure on the driver’s skills. For the final race, Frost started off 10th on the grid, and valiantly fought his way up to the 5th in the final round. This earned him the Hard Charger award, a win that was rightfully deserved.
It was a tough challenge to get back up where we belonged; was hard to get past because the cars were equals. Overall, I was happy with the results we achieved since this was one of the toughest weekends yet. Moving forward, I’m looking forward to Barber on the 31st.
– Danial Frost
Lundqvist and Car fought an extremely tight battle for 1st and 2nd positions respectively, followed by Malukaas in 3rd, whilst three drivers did not finish due to incidents on the track that put them out of the race.
The next race is scheduled for Barber Motorsports Park on July 31st to August 2nd in Birmingham.
For live timing, full race results and more information on FR, visit FRAmericas.com. For post-race video highlights follow FR Americas on Twitter (@FR_Americas), Instagram (@framericas) and Facebook (@framericas).