Daniel Erickson is ready to step up another rung on the motorsport ladder – that’s the undeniable conclusion following the Australian driver’s sensational test session with the Mundill Star Mazda team at MSR Houston Raceway.
In his first drive of a ‘wings and slicks’ openwheeler, Erickson lapped the 3.38km Texas road circuit on Thursday (USA time) within 0.1 seconds of the best time ever recorded by a current-spec Star Mazda.
The AMSF International Rising Star almost certainly would have set a new benchmark for the category if the truncated test had continued to the end of the day.
But he had to finish at lunchtime to catch his return flight to Sydney.
The test, originally scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, was extended after rain on the first day limited Erickson to a handful of slow laps on the saturated track.
Having spent a cold and windy Wednesday familiarising himself with the ‘wings and slicks’ car and the 3.38km MSR Houston layout, he got down to some serious laps in less windy but still chilly weather on Thursday morning.
He recorded a 1m 25.4s lap on his first – and only, due to the time limitation – set of new tyres during the session.
Another 1m 25.4s lap in the same stint proved that the first one wasn’t a fluke.
To say that Erickson impressed Mundill co-owner Jeff Hill would be an understatement.
“Daniel got within a tenth of a second of the record this morning despite conditions that made the track about half a second ‘slow’!” Hill said.
“With a little more work, I am confident that he’d have lapped in the 1m 24s bracket.
“That would have been the quickest time here since Star Mazda switched from bias ply to radial tyres.”
Erickson, who this year completed a successful first international racing season in British Formula Ford, is due to arrive in Sydney on Saturday night after 10 months away from home.
BACKGROUND
Star Mazda is among the USA’s most competitive openwheeler ‘development’ categories, boasting 20-plus fields at most of the 13 rounds in this year’s championship.
Sanctioned by the International Motor Sports Association (IMSA), the Mazda-backed series is also highly lucrative.
The end-of-season awards total $US1.5M, with a fully sponsored drive in the USA Formula Atlantic Championship for the overall winner.
Star Mazda is a ‘one-make’ category featuring a common carbon-fibre chassis, 180kW 13B rotary engine, six-speed sequential transmission and Goodyear racing tyres.
The category is widely regarded as a stepping-stone to top-level categories such as Indycars and Formula 1.
For more information about Star Mazda, visit the Star Mazda website
