IMSA WEATHERTECH SPORTSCAR CHAMPIONSHIP: BATTLE AT THE BRICK

September 22, 2024

Adam Adelson

Elliott Skeer

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: We are joined now by our GTD winners, Adam Adelson is to the left, next to Elliott Skeer.

Adam, start us off, first win at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. What does that mean to you?

ADAM ADELSON: First, Yan (Heylen) had to catch a flight and he couldn't be here.

First win at Indy is absolutely incredible. I've lost three championships here over the last two years, and in different racing series, and you know, Elliot asked me before this weekend if I thought this was going to be an emotional one and I said, "No, we are here to practice. We are here to learn. We are here to race and just improve for what's to come in the future."

Little did we know that we'd both be walking away with our first IMSA win at Indianapolis, a place which has treated us so poorly in the past. It's just absolutely incredible.

THE MODERATOR: Elliot, you've worked your way up through the various ranks here in the IMSA sanctioned series and elsewhere through the Porsche ranks, and now you've made it to the top of the ladder here. Tell us about it and what it means to win.

ELLIOTT SKEER: It's a pretty emotional day, as we say, we've yet to have a non-emotional race at Indy for highs and lows.

To finally win an IMSA race and to spend 20 years chasing this to do it with Wright Motorsports in a Porsche; it's literally what I've been chasing, literally that exact combo, for a decade now.

To not only do that, but to do it with my best friend, Adam, at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, it's the best day of my life without a shadow of a doubt. One of the coolest feelings. Everything that I've worked towards for it absolutely paying off with it.

The opportunity to kiss the bricks, you don't get that opportunity in life without being in a pretty cool situation, and then to be able to come here on a weekend that, yeah, as we were saying, we didn't think it was going to be a high emotional weekend and it comes out being the most. It's an unbelievable feeling.

The team did everything right. We guessed -- for the conditions today and how different they had been to the previous days, obviously with the Porsche, you had to make some adjustments for that, and they absolutely nailed it today.

There's an insane amount of credit that has to go to the engineers and the crew for what they did to this car to give us the opportunity to fight for the win and we just took every part of that opportunity and executed over six hours.

Yeah, truly, truly a special day in my life.

Q. Seems like you guys got to the lead early. How did you plot for all the various conditions and the chaos on track?

ADAM ADELSON: Well, this being my first year in IMSA and first year racing at what I like to think is a pretty professional level, for me, it's taking the start, it's always good to do that. For me to get my stints out early is kind of the goal because Elliot and Yan are considerably faster than me.

So pretty much for me, it's go out there, learn and try to give them the car in the best condition and in the best position that I possibly can. And you know, I do teal know that in a lot of these races, you know, the longer format ones, endurance races, that the beginning stints don't typically matter as much as the middle and the end ones.

Usually, it's just survive and stay on the lead lap and try to stay as high up in the pack as you can. But you know, today I really felt like I made a difference and the driver order, after that, just with the yellows and the rain, it just made sense to keep me in for the first hour 30, hour 40, and hand off to Yan and have Elliott double and have Yan finish because we wanted him to finish.

Q. It was a 56-car field and you had the changing conditions as it was. Could you put into context, from our vantage point up here, when it was under green flag conditions, it was pretty exciting.

ELLIOTT SKEER: It's definitely a different mindset in those sort of conditions in an Endurance race. It's different in it's a two-hour versus a six; if it's changing versus just a straight dry race.

Ultimately days like today become the one who losses the least amount of time is the one who ultimately puts themselves in the best position.

Adam was definitely in the most changing conditions out there, and ultimately he did an unbelievable job driving through the field in the middle of the rain and chaos to put us in a strong position; and then it became the job of both Yan and myself just to minimize any losses.

So the traffic is nonstop around here. It's definitely a great warm up for Petit in that sense. The traffic is unbelievable.

It's how little can you lose with traffic, how little can you lose making a mistake in staying out of the grass, staying out of the gravel and ultimately running a strong, consistent pace up front is what we needed to do. But it definitely took Adam being up there to get us in that position to run that pace that we needed.

It's definitely a lot of management. You are definitely not on a qualifying lap every lap like you are at some other tracks, which frankly I love that style of Endurance racing, just being smart with it and it all seemed to work out today.

Q. Is it fun, stressful or all of the above?

ELLIOTT SKEER: It's amazing. It's what we work for to be in all those situations. As a driver when you're out there, it's changing but you're pushing yourself. It's unlike other sports. There is a physical edge. You know, there is a grip limit to the tire so you are doing everything you can to stay as close to that as possible without going over.

So it's a physical challenge, a mental challenge, and at the end of the day, you know, doing that is what we live for and then ultimately to come out with a win, it truly makes a very special day.

Q. You talked about the setup calls, was it just that, you just had the right car under you, or were there some strategy decisions that played a part in getting to the front as well?

ELLIOTT SKEER: I think I can make the pun of, we definitely did have the "right" car for both the "R" and the "W" sense of the word.

I'd like to say, it's the most satisfying thing to win in a Porsche because it is quite hard to win in a Porsche. Everything has to be right with that car to do it, and when you do, it's truly unbelievable.

Ultimately with the conditions changing as much as they do, you ultimately have to play a little bit of a game in understanding what it might be the next day. We took a look at the weather and said you know what, try it this way, try it that way.

I think we had a good hour-and-to-hour-and-a-half discussion on the driver order, and then we threw it out the window and then we redid it, and then in the middle of the race, we changed it up again.

Ultimately it played out as it needed to. But I can safely, say it truly takes a team for this result to come together. As drivers, we only have the car that's under us. As the crew, they only give us what they can and let the drivers deal with it.

Yeah, this is the biggest team effort I've been a part of, and just everything came together today.

ADAM ADELSON: Just to add on to that.

ELLIOTT SKEER: Yeah.

ADAM ADELSON: We lost almost our entire first practice due to a collision with another car, and neither Elliott nor I got into the car until yesterday for the first time.

ELLIOTT SKEER: Yeah.

ADAM ADELSON: I think we really didn't have the right setup on the car, and we didn't get it right for quali either so we kind of threw the kitchen sink at it but in a very calculated way with a lot of intent in every single change.

I have to give a really strong shout out to the guys at Wright Motorsports because they really pulled a rabbit out of the hat with that one and gave us an incredible, incredible car that worked great in the dry. Worked great in the wet. It was comfortable to drive. It was just amazing.

Q. Hearing that, does it make it even more impressive that you led 140 out of the 207 laps that the GTD class completed?

ADAM ADELSON: Absolutely.

ELLIOTT SKEER: Without a doubt.

ADAM ADELSON: Absolutely. Without a doubt.

ELLIOTT SKEER: I got us up there.

ADAM ADELSON: These guys are some proper, proper wheelmen. I got us into the Top-10, and I think we started 16th and ended up in fifth, and then Yan drove it straight to the front.

ELLIOTT SKEER: I just drove around. Did what I can with it, and when you get the position up there, it's a lot easier to make it happen.

But you were definitely in the muck of it to say the least. Had to keep the nose clean. Kept all the guide plans on and put us in the position with it. So a lot of variables today to say the least.

ADAM ADELSON: I didn't want to get out. They were like -- box this lap. I was like, wait, I can go a little bit longer.

ELLIOTT SKEER: Tires were good. Yeah, we sensed that for sure.