Named as one of the new recipients of the Porsche Deluxe Female Driver Development Program, Chloe Chambers resumed her Porsche Sprint Challenge North America campaign in the Cayman GT4 category with two more pole positions, two fastest laps and a race win at VIRginia International Raceway.
Chloe Chambers has proved her talent in single seaters - with a historic pole position and victory in Formula Regional Oceania - as well as in GT racing, having just committed to her first full season of GT4 in the Porsche Sprint Challenge North America. Just one round in, Chambers stunned everyone with a double victory at debut at Barber Motorsports Park, which attracted the attention of Porsche Motorsport North America. Chambers was in fact soon added to the Porsche Deluxe Female Driver Development Program - alongside Sabré Cook and Madeline Stewart - in an effort by Porsche to further support the most outstanding female drivers up the ladder of its pyramid. At her second round in the Porsche Cayman GT4 Clubsport category, the 18 year old talent tackled the challenging VIRginia International Raceway - a technical and undulating 5.262 km circuit located in Alton, Virginia. Chambers turned out to be dominant since practice, when she led FP2 by almost three tenths - and then scored pole position, for both races, with a 1:55.939 that would be the only reference under the 1:56 mark. Second on the grid, Nicholas Maloy attempted an optimistic move into turn one and hit the side of Chambers' Monoflo-sponsored #70 Porsche Cayman GT4, running the pole sitter off-track. Both cars sustained damage and Maloy eventually retired; Chambers could continue, albeit with a broken wheel and puncture which required a pit stop. Having lost two laps, Chloe was back out on track in order to maximise points. Florian Eyme led Paul Bocuse and Alain Scalzo to the finish line, as Chambers limited damages with a P10 finish. Despite rear toe damage, she still managed to set the fastest lap of the race, in a 1:58.633 that was over half a second faster than the rest of the field. On Sunday, though, Chambers had another chance to continue her winning progression. From pole position, Chloe knew she would need a good start and then her pace would have allowed her to pull a gap. And that's exactly what she did: after a brilliant rolling start, Chambers immediately opened a 1.5 second gap over the first lap, while Paul Bocuse and Florian Eyme battled for second place. Chambers was almost two seconds per lap faster in the first few laps, before she settled around 2 seconds up the road to the closer pursuer. Chambers was at one point four seconds ahead, then managed the race and was never under threat. At around the mid-race point, Bocuse got closer, but never close enough to get under the one second margin. While the front runners encountered the lapped traffic, Chambers was flawless and managed to further extend her gap in the final 10 minutes of a very clean race throughout the field. The newly-appointed Porsche Deluxe Female Driver Development driver crossed the finish line in a comfortable first place, ahead of Bocuse and Eyme, to win her third race out of four outings in the series to date. "What a weekend!" - she told us after yet another impressive performance. "I qualified on pole and got great starts in both races. Race one didn’t end the way I had hoped after being hit from behind in turn one", she summed up, highlighting that she was lucky to make it to the end of race 1 with minimal damage. "In race two I was able to build a gap at the beginning and from then on maintained the gap to the other drivers and managed tires", Chloe continued. "I’m learning lots about managing the tires throughout the race and getting maximum performance out of them during qualifying." "Big thank you to TPC Racing for getting the car really dialed in, Monoflo International for the endless support, and all my other sponsors and supporters! It was Monoflo and TPC’s home race so it was great to end it out with a win!" Having missed the first double-header at Sebring, Chambers now sits sixth in the Porsche Sprint Challenge North America Cayman GT4 championship standings, with 194 points. Her pace shown in the second and third rounds, though, might suggest that the young American driver could be soon climbing the ranks.
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