Photos Courtesy of Rick Dole

Austin, Texas (8 March 2015) – TruSpeed Autosport driver Sloan Urry kicked off his 2015 Pirelli World Challenge GT Cup presented by MOMO championship campaign in a big way as he completed both Race 1 and 2 runner-up in the opening rounds at Circuit of the Americas. With many representatives from Engel & Völkers and SecurityNational in attendance, the excitement was palpable as the team celebrated the podium results.

Urry began the weekend strongly by qualifying the No. 02 Engel & Völkers / SecurityNational Mortgage Porsche third on the grid which lined him up on the inside of Row 2 for the start of Race 1 on Saturday.

It was a frantic start among the 48-car combined class field and Urry went into survival mode on the first two laps as he avoided the chaos on the start.

“It was my first time ever doing a standing start,” said Urry, who had only ever experienced a rolling start to the green flag prior to Saturday’s race. “I think it’s going to go down in the record books for me as far as being the most hectic! A car stalled in our lane so it was just mayhem from there. Everyone fanned out and it was just every man for himself at that point. I got really close to contact on the opening lap multiple times. There were guys crashing all over in front of me. Honestly I just went into survival mode the first couple laps. The GTA cars were in the mix in a big way and got in the way quite a bit. At the start, I didn’t really worry about my position, I just relied on my pace and when everyone calmed down I went ahead and began chasing down second place.”

It wasn’t long before Urry caught the second place car and made his way around to take over the runner-up position. Setting his fastest time on Lap 4, Urry sailed to a second place finish in the season-opening event while also minding the immense amount of GT traffic on the 3.4-mile circuit.

With several Engel & Völkers / SecurityNational Mortgage representatives on hand, the podium result was all the more exciting as Urry was welcomed by an enthusiastic crowd of supporters following the race.

Sunday brought much different track conditions with rain falling most of the day. A 15-minute warm up was held in the morning ahead of the 50-minute afternoon race.

Rain began falling harder just before the start of Race 2 and Pirelli World Challenge officials deemed the start to be a rolling start, rather than the traditional standing starts that the series utilizes. Urry’s second place finish from Race 1 saw him open Race 2 from outside the first row.

Despite the traffic of the large GT field and the track conditions offering a new set of challenges at every corner on every lap, Urry once again drove a trouble-free race to drive home to a second place finish going two-for-two for Engel & Völkers and SecurityNational.

“I can’t ask for more than to end up on the podium in both races in our first weekend,” said Urry. “It was pretty crazy out there with all the traffic and the rain. The windows were fogging up so much that I couldn’t see anything so I was just kind of just going with it and trying to keep it together. The conditions were really sketchy. Halfway through the race I was getting oversteer and sliding sideways going down the straightaway so it kind of caught me by surprise a little bit and I had to regroup. I just had to defend against Alex Udell at the end there, but it worked out well in the end for us. It was a great weekend for TruSpeed, and Engel & Völkers and SecurityNational – the ones that got us here. I just tried to bring it home in one piece and on the podium again.”

TruSpeed Autosport Team Owner Tyler Tadevic was pleased with the team’s effort.

“Overall I’m really pleased, I think we left a little on the table but it’s a great place to be,” said Tadevic. “Second place with our Engel & Völkers car is a great place to be and obviously I’m really pleased with Colin (Thompson) in the Kelly-Moss car – way to go, two wins in a row. I think we’ve sort of established ourselves as someone to be considered in the overall championship, but it’s the first weekend of a long season so we don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves. But we’re cautiously optimistic at our chances for the rest of the year.”

It was TruSpeed Autosport’s first Pirelli World Challenge GT Cup presented by MOMO weekend, and the team also had three cars entered in the Pirelli GT3 Cup Trophy USA series driven by Jim Slavik, Ray Shahi and Albert Salvo.

Next up, TruSpeed Autosport heads to the streets of St. Pete, Florida for Rounds 3 & 4 of the 2015 Championship.