Copeland Motorsports drivers Tyler Gonzalez and Tyler Maxson took on NOLA Motorsports Park for the second event weekend in the Pirelli GT4 America program. They took to the track in their #74 Toyota Supra GT4, with a new white and orange colored livery which proved to be successful as they secured their first podium result of the season despite challenging conditions.
The weekend started off with an unfortunate incident in practice one where the car stopped at the pit entrance bringing out a red flag. After observing the event, the crew’s mind-shift changed to making sure the car was as strong as it could be for practice two and the rest of the race weekend.
Heading into Saturday, everyone’s eyes were set on qualifying, but the crew had another thing to keep in mind, the weather. After qualifying, the clouds started to show up and the radar started to show what everyone had been worried about as a storm was approaching that would change the direction for the complete weekend.
“We knew that there was the possibility of the storm coming while we were waiting but we didn’t expect it to cancel the rest of the day,” Gonzalez says, referring to the fact that their race one was rescheduled to Sunday and race two on the weekend was to be postponed to another event determined later.
As Sunday came both Gonzalez and Maxson were eager to get back out on track. Gonzalez started off race one running near the top of the charts in the second position. Due to a collection of yellow flags, Gonzalez maintained his position in the top-three before the mandatory driver change ensued. Shortly after Maxson took over the driver’s seat there was another yellow flag that moved Maxson to fifth but that did not faze the Copeland Motorsports efforts. Pushing hard in the final moments of the race Maxson was able to advance back forward crossing the line in the third position and securing the first podium result for the new Copeland Motorsports Pirelli GT4 America program.
“We could not be prouder of everything these boys did this weekend. Their spirits were never shaken, and they kept a smile on their faces even when things kept seeming to get hard,” expressed Dean Copeland. “What we needed was a result to gain momentum and we now have that. We are already looking forward to the next one.”
For more information on Tyler Maxson or to follow the event weekend, be sure to tune into the Tyler Maxson Racing social media pages by searching ‘Tyler Maxson Racing’. For more information on Tyler Gonzalez, please search for him via his social media pages at ‘Tyler Gonzalez Racing’.
Photos: Halston Pittman – MotorSportMedia