Lack of experience almost certainly cost Daniel Erickson a ‘wings and slicks’ debut race win at Virginia International Raceway today.
The 22 year-old Sydney driver lined up on pole position for the rolling start of the first round of the American F2000 Championship Series, but he was outjumped at the green flag by second and sixth qualifiers Victor Carbone and Tim Kautz.
After quickly regaining second place from Kautz and then catching Carbone by mid-race, Erickson discovered that overtaking a winged racing car is much harder than in his previous category, FF1600.
Loss of downforce behind Carbone’s car, the Brazilian’s defensive driving, and a series of yellow flags at crucial points around the 5.3km circuit kept Erickson’s Primus Racing Van Diemen 0.213 seconds in arrears at the chequered flag.
“It was my first rolling race start from pole position, and I didn’t time it as well as the drivers around me,” Erickson confessed afterwards.
“Repassing Kautz wasn’t a major problem because he was quite a bit slower, but when I caught up to Carbone my car started understeering badly.
"I dropped back for a few laps to save my front tyres, and when I tried to dive past him under brakes there were yellow flags waving every time.
“On the last lap he shut the door on me into Old Tree Corner before the back straight.”
Despite Erickson’s disappointment at not winning the race, he was pleased to finish on the podium in his first race in the highly competitive national F2000 Championship Series.
He was especially satisfied with his 1m 54.496s pole position time, which was 0.344s clear of Carbone and set a new F2000 qualifying record at VIR.
“There were some stoppages early in the qualifying session to recover cars that had gone off the circuit, so there wasn't a lot of time to find a clear lap,” Erickson said.
“At the end I managed three or four quick laps together, and with the changes that Jon Baytos and the Primus Team made to the car overnight it was enough to get pole.”
Erickson will have an opportunity to make amends for his poor start in Sunday's second round of the F2000 Championship Series.
