Tyler McQuarrie

I was so excited to race in the World Challenge at Long Beach but was not sure what to expect since LPL Motorsports had only gotten the Lotus Exige S 5 weeks prior to Long Beach. The team work around the clock and pulled many all nighters to get it ready. We tested the car twice at Spring Mountain and got it working pretty well, but we still didn’t know what to expect.

Our first practice on Friday was short because we had issue with the exhaust but I was still able to get 1 flying lap in which put us in 2nd place behind Peter Cunningham in the Real Time Acura. I think we knew then that we had a good car but we still had many little bugs to deal with. We made a few changes and jumped up to quickest in the afternoon practice but we also lost the gearbox, which meant that we had to go to the stock box.

I only wanted to do a few laps in qualifying since we have to race on the same tires. I only ended up doing 2 laps because I caught traffic and it turns out that those 2 laps were more than enough. I got pole for the GTS class! The LPL team was so excited and this was a great accomplishment with everything considered.

World Challenge does standing starts but we never had a chance to practice one. I wasn’t to worried because I did standing starts when I ran Formula Vauxhall in Europe and I pretty much do them all the time in drifting:) My plan was to get a good start and try and get a GT car between me and Cunningham to help get a gap. I ended up getting by 2 GT cars at the start and another 2 into turn one!

I lost radio communication with the pits so I had no idea the gap I had. All I could do was to look at the jumbo screen when I drove down the front straight. I saw cunningham going into the pits on the jumbo screen so I knew I could dial it back a bit and just nurse the car home. It was a pretty uneventful race for me and just tried to stay out of the way for the GT cars. The white flag came out and I remember thinking “NO WAY… We are going to win Long Beach!”

What better way to thank LPL Motorsport than to get pole and win flag to flag!

I was reminded during this interview that this was the first win for Lotus at Long Beach since Mario did it in 1978! I really hope we can do more World Challenge races in the LPL Lotus Exige S. Even though we missed the first 2 races, I feel like we could still make a run for the championship!