Following a “soft launch” of the 2023 SRO Motorsports America season last month in St. Petersburg, CrowdStrike Racing heads to Sonoma Raceway for a full program of competition this weekend with entries in each of SRO America’s premier GT racing series.
The opening of the SRO America weekend is part of the GT Challenge of Sonoma protected by CrowdStrike. A stunning field of 140 cars are entered across five race series that will test their mettle around the 1.99-mile, 12-turn Sonoma Raceway circuit.
CrowdStrike Racing will be present in three categories at Sonoma:
● Fanatec GT World Challenge America: No. 04 CrowdStrike Mercedes-AMG GT3 from CrowdStrike Racing by Riley for George Kurtz and Colin Braun● GT America Powered by AWS: No. 04 CrowdStrike Mercedes-AMG GT3 from CrowdStrike Racing by Riley for George Kurtz
● Pirelli GT4 America: No. 92 CrowdStrike/AWS BMW M4 GT4 from Random Vandals Racing for Kevin Boehm and Kenton Koch
GT World Challenge and GT4 America each will contest their first rounds of the season while GT America holds its third and fourth races.
In their first race of the season together, Kurtz and Braun will look to win at Sonoma for the third – and possibly fourth – time. There are two 90-minute races in GT World Challenge, and the pairing were victorious once in each of the last two seasons at Sonoma in their CrowdStrike Mercedes-AMG.
In addition, Kurtz swept the opening weekend of GT America in 2021 at Sonoma and captured one of the two 40-minute races a year ago in another CrowdStrike by Riley Mercedes-AMG. He will look for his first GT America victory of 2023 this weekend.
New to the CrowdStrike Racing program is Pirelli GT4 America. After claiming championships in two of SRO America’s Touring Car categories in 2020 and 2022, Boehm is “graduating” to production-based GT racing with the CrowdStrike/AWS BMW M4 GT4 from Random Vandals Racing alongside new teammate Koch.
Like GT World Challenge, the GT4 America series features two races per weekend – each one hour in length with two drivers sharing each entry. Boehm couldn’t have picked a better track to make his GT4 debut than Sonoma, where he has won his last three races.
CrowdStrike Racing Supporters out in Full Force at Sonoma
Not only is the Sonoma weekend special with three CrowdStrike Racing entries and event sponsorship, but it also will see CrowdStrike welcome a large group of supporters to the rolling hills of northern California.
Noteworthy is Saturday’s Employee Day, where more than 100 CrowdStrike employees and their families have been invited to spend the day exploring and learning about CrowdStrike’s wide range of involvements in SRO America and the company’s support of the Operation Motorsport program.
Another key activation at Sonoma is CrowdStrike’s exclusive CXO Summit, led by Shawn Henry – CrowdStrike Chief Security Officer – and Angelo Comazzetto – Senior Principal, Office of the CISO at AWS. Key local and regional business figures from a variety of areas – all guests of CrowdStrike – will meet with industry thought leaders to discuss the current trends in cloud computing and cybersecurity. Each CXO Summit session will allow the VIP guests to learn how to best secure their businesses from breaches. Additionally, CXO guests will have a number of opportunities to get closer to the action of an SRO America weekend. Guests will have the chance to tour the racetrack, be part of meet-and-greet sessions with CrowdStrike Racing teams and drivers, enjoy trackside hospitality, give the command to start engines, wave the green flag for any of the six races featuring CrowdStrike Racing and present trophies to winners during post-race podium ceremonies.
Driver quotes ahead of the Sonoma SRO America weekend
George Kurtz, No. 04 CrowdStrike Mercedes AMG GT3: “This is going to be a great weekend for everyone at CrowdStrike Racing and our many guests. It’s always special to race at Sonoma Raceway, but it’s even more special to win races – as Colin and I have been fortunate to do – surrounded by so many of our CrowdStrike staff and CrowdStrike Racing supporters. This season of GT World Challenge America will be challenging as new drivers join the competition. It’s important that we all execute our roles perfectly to start our championship chase in the right direction.”
Colin Braun, No. 04 CrowdStrike Mercedes AMG GT3: “I’m excited to kick off the SRO season with the CrowdStrike team! Sonoma has been a great track for us in years past. It’s a challenging track with the low grip and high tire degradation, but we are ready. George seems to excel in situations where you really have to feel the car and drive right on the edge. We look forward to this weekend in front of our CrowdStrike supporters and partners!”
Kevin Boehm, No. 92 CrowdStrike/AWS BMW M4 GT4: “I haven’t been this excited for the start of a racing season in a long time. Making the move to GT4 America – with the support of CrowdStrike and AWS – is a challenge I’ve been eager to take on. It’s a very different way of racing compared to the single-driver touring car races that I’ve been a part of. Kenton and I will work together with the team to find the best balance in our racecar and tires to give us the best chance at success. Being able to adapt and compromise is a key to winning races in this series, and I’m excited for this new program to start.”
For more information, visit CrowdStrikeRacing.com. Follow #CrowdStrikeRacing on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for updates.
About CrowdStrike
CrowdStrike (Nasdaq: CRWD), a global cybersecurity leader, has redefined modern security with the world’s most advanced cloud-native platform for protecting critical areas of enterprise risk — endpoints and cloud workloads, identity and data.
Powered by the CrowdStrike Security Cloud and world-class AI, the CrowdStrike Falcon® platform leverages real-time indicators of attack, threat intelligence, evolving adversary tradecraft and enriched telemetry from across the enterprise to deliver hyper-accurate detections, automated protection and remediation, elite threat hunting and prioritized observability of vulnerabilities. Purpose-built in the cloud with a single lightweight-agent architecture, the Falcon platform delivers rapid and scalable deployment, superior protection and performance, reduced complexity and immediate time-to-value.
CrowdStrike: We stop breaches.
Learn more: https://www.crowdstrike.com/
Follow us: Blog | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram
Start a free trial today: https://www.crowdstrike.com/free-trial-guide/
2023 CrowdStrike, Inc. All rights reserved. CrowdStrike, the falcon logo, CrowdStrike Falcon and CrowdStrike Threat Graph are marks owned by CrowdStrike, Inc. and registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and in other countries. CrowdStrike owns other trademarks and service marks, and may use the brands of third parties to identify their products and services.
Images:
Fred Hardy, Brian Cleary
Media Contact:
Danielle Crespo, Sr. Racing Program Manager, CrowdStrike
danielle@crowdstrike.com