Photo by Nathan Deering
By Alex Caruso
November is the month for most to spend time with family, feast on holiday food and watch as the leaves start to tumble off their branches but for the drivers on Hyperion Racing, November was the month to hunker down, and prepare for one of the most challenging races on the IVRA calendar - Road Atlanta.
Coming off the team’s success at Road America, drivers Turner Schroll, Jeffrey Lund, and Alex Caruso knew they had to step up their game to keep the team’s momentum going. With a combined 40+ hours of time spent preparing setups, reviewing data, planning strategy, and practicing racecraft the trio of drivers knew they were as prepared as they could be to face the chaos of multiclass racing at Road Atlanta.
Heading into race day, Alex Caruso took the helm of the Hyperion Racing #454 Mercedes-AMG GT4 first to get the car qualified as well as brave the opening stint of the race. With just 15 short minutes to get the car warmed up and set the fastest flying lap possible, Alex hopped into the car, fell in line with the rest of the GT4 pack, built up his gap, and pushed the #454 to its absolute limits. After a nail-biting quarter hour, Hyperion finished the session with the 7th fastest time in a field of 22 cars. With the easy part now behind them, Hyperion set their eyes up the road to the starting grid.
Over 60 cars lined up before turn 1 of the 2.5 mile track ready to race their hardest. With a quick formation lap done, the green flag fell and team Hyperion Racing immediately found themselves fighting to keep 7th position in the GT4 field. Side-by-side with the #491 Sabelt Esports car through T1, then uphill through T2 and T3, and descending into the esses until finally disaster struck. In the second ess just before T5, the two GT4s made netcode contact causing the #491 to spin off the track and into the barrier while the Hyperion Racing car lost valuable time to the pack ahead and a position to the opportunistic #480 CoRe SimRacing Mercedes-AMG GT4. After a chaotic start, Alex got his head down and fought to keep his track position. Unfortunately, with traffic coming up just 4 laps after the start of the race, a flying LMP3 put Alex off his line into T1 where he lost another two positions just before the race’s first yellow flag was waved, preventing any quick replies from Caruso.
Four grueling laps under pacing speed later and it was time for the field to start racing again. Finding himself down in 10th, Caruso quickly tucked in behind the Fiercely Forward GT4 in front for just one short lap before yet another caution was thrown. With only 5 of the race’s first 17 laps being under green, the entire IVRA field was itching to get back to racing. Finally, on lap 18, the safety car came in and the race could get back underway. After 22 relatively uneventful laps of following in the GT4 draft train, Caruso could finally bring the car into the pits and put an end to his stressful stint by handing the car over to Turner Schroll who was eagerly waiting to get out into traffic and put his mark on the race.
As a result of the different fuel strategies various teams used, the #454 came out of the pits down in 13th but it didn’t take Schroll long to improve on that. Keeping pressure on Florian Hoehn in the #467 GT4, Turner forced a mistake from the driver coming out of T12 and moved up to 12th position. With the cars on alternate pit strategies coming in the following laps, Turner focused on putting down some blazing fast lap times and moved up another 5 positions, bringing the team nearly back to where they started the race, P8, before another full-course yellow came out to cool off the action. With Turner completing the majority of his stint under the green flag, Hyperion’s strategy call had the team pit under yellow for full service and the final driver swap over to Jeffrey Lund.
With Jeff experiencing nearly two hours of watching his team fight on track, pace under yellow and stay out of trouble, he jumped into the driver’s seat ready for anything. Once again, alternate pit strategies saw team Hyperion Racing restart the race further back than when the yellow flag was thrown, this time down in P10. After a perfect restart hanging just off the bumper of the Impulse Racing #457 and Geodesic #463 GT4s, Jeff put down a solid 7 laps under green before the next caution was thrown and Hyperion Racing filtered back up to P8 on strategy. Unfortunately, this is where the team’s good luck would start to falter.
Racing hard after the restart for 10 straight laps, Jeffrey started feeling the performance of his Mercedes-AMG GT4 slip away from him, picking up understeer and oversteer in areas of the track where he had not previously felt it. Struggling on his tires, Jeff lost two positions to the rapid GT4s behind and heavy traffic forced a sizeable gap to the GT4 field ahead. Jeff regathered his thoughts, flipped down his visor, and set off down the road to salvage his stint. With the final hour of the race now upon the field and desperation beginning to set in, battles broke out across the track and allowed the #454 to close the gap and pick up a few easy positions as two GT4s were forced off track in separate incidents. Back up into P6, Hyperion’s highest position of their race so far, and with a renewed vigor, Jeff finished out his stint and brought the Hyperion Racing Mercedes-AMG back to the pits for the final full-service stop.
After over three hours of hard racing, many teams were on different strategies with nobody knowing exactly how many full-course yellows would come out to interfere with their plans. After the pit cycles, the #454 remained in P6 but crucially, with not enough fuel to finish out the race. Charging ahead into the unknown, Jeff found himself on the bumper of the #444 Fiercely Forward Mercedes-AMG once again, this time making a pass on the back straight stick and improving Hyperion’s position to 5th in the GT4 class with Impulse Racing’s Vladislav Shopov hot on his heels. LMP3 traffic playing a role once again, Jeffrey was put off line into T7 which hurt his run down the back straight and forced him to concede P5 back to the Impulse car.
Facing strong pressure from the GT4s behind and knowing that the fuel left in the tank wouldn’t last the rest of the race, the team made the call to bring the car into the pits for a breather and a final splash of fuel. At this point, the team had come to the realization that they had made the wrong strategy call and many of the cars on track would not need to pit again before the end of the race. Helplessly, Jeff watched on as his competitors flew by the front straight while his fuel numbers ticked slowly upwards. Once the #454 was ready to get going again, the damage had been done and Hyperion Racing fell back to P17, finding little solace in the knowledge that precious few cars ahead of them would also need to pit and fill their cars with a few drops of fuel.
Determined as ever, Jeff soldiered on for the final 30 minutes of racing. Fighting tooth-and-nail to work his way back up to the pack who was on the preferred strategy, Jeff was wringing out every last one of his Mercedes-AMG twin-turbo V8’s 460 horsepower, pushing as hard as he could until finally stepping over the limit in T1, grabbing the grass, and spinning with just seven minutes left to go on the race timer. Jeff was able to keep the car out of the multitude of concrete barriers, got his wheels rolling again and finished out the remainder of his difficult race. While Jeff’s mistake ultimately cost the team two positions, many more had been lost due to strategy, resulting in Hyperion Racing crossing the line in an unlucky 13th place. There were no donuts that day, no post-race cheers nor breaths of relief. The trio of Hyperion Racing drivers took off their helmets, dusted themselves off, and set their eyes adamantly on the horizon. Indianapolis, here we come.
Believe the #HYPErion
Alex Caruso
Driver, Owner
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