Kyle Gimple Press Release
The IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge Series staged Round 7 of the championship at Road America on Saturday and it was another positive outing for Kyle Gimple and his Compass360 Racing squad. Since debuting the new No. 75 Advanced Paint Technology/Children’s Tumor Foundation Audi S3 at Sebring International Raceway earlier this year, the team has worked to improve the car and has seen marked progress through the past few races.
Despite minimal practice time during the weekend, Gimple and co-driver Paul Holton drove to a 14th place finish in the race after starting 15th when qualifying was washed out and the grid was set by championship point order. That result is the team’s best finish this year in the Audi machine.
An issue with the car during the first practice and then a long red flag period during the second practice, saw the No. 75 Audi only take six laps around the Road America circuit prior to the drop of the green flag. But even without the full allotment of practice time, Gimple was happy with the set-up on the car and pleased with the improvements the team has made.
“The car was good – much better this weekend than we’ve had in the past,” said Gimple. “It’s a good sign that we’re accelerating our development with the car, getting faster each weekend. It’s the second weekend in a row we’re leaving basically happy with where we finished. We ended up 14th, and a top-15 this weekend is really good. It’s the best finish we’ve had all year in the Audi. We’ll go to VIR (Virginia International Raceway), where we’ve tested before, and just improve from there. I’m expecting by the time we go to Road Atlanta we’ll be on the box. We’ll see how it goes, it’s definitely promising. But there is some stuff we have to work on to get the car to the next level, so we’ll try to get it to that point by VIR.”
Gimple will next be in IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge action on August 20 at VIR for the Oak Tree Grand Prix event.
Photo credit: Sideline Sports Photography