The debut weekend for the Regulator Racing team saw Jeff Burton and Philip Ellis of the No. 91 Burton Lumber Mercedes-AMG GT3 claim their first podium of the year with an impressive third-place finish in Race 1 of Fanatec GT World Challenge America powered by AWS competition this weekend at Sebring International Raceway.
Moving over from sister team DXDT Racing to the Regulator Racing outfit, expectations remained high for Burton and Ellis after a promising showing in Sonoma last month. On Friday, they immediately made good on that promise by running the fastest lap of the day, before Ellis took pole in qualifying and claimed an SRO GT3 track record on Saturday with a lap of 1:59.217.
Leading from the point on Saturday afternoon in Race 1, Ellis quickly pulled away at the front of the field as part of the first step of the team’s alternate strategy, which pitted Ellis against the Pro-Am class’ bronze drivers. When Ellis ceded control of the car just over halfway through, Burton took up the fight against the pro drivers behind. Although he was eventually chased down by the two trailing BMWs with just over a quarter of an hour remaining, Burton’s strong late-race pace meant that he claimed the third step on the podium by a margin of over 30 seconds at the checkered flag. Ellis also claimed the CrowdStrike Fastest Lap award, a feat which he repeated on Sunday.
On Sunday, the inverse strategy was employed, with Burton dueling with the class’ pros at the drop of the green flag. After managing the gap to the cars ahead in the first 40 minutes, Burton handed the car off to Ellis well within the window for a podium, or potentially a race win. The strategy would never get the opportunity to play out, though, after Ellis made contact with the No. 93 Acura NSX after it went wide and had a snap of oversteer on the exit of Turn 5, leaving Ellis with nowhere to go. A broken hood and time lost repairing the front of the car effectively ended the race for the No. 91 shortly thereafter.
“The way they’ve taken risks with the driver order has proven that the team is capable of strong results, and I think they’ve added excitement to these races,” said team owner David Askew. “After the learnings from Sonoma, I was really impressed by the way everyone performed here in Sebring, and I think this podium is the first of many this season.”
Regulator Racing will be back in action in just two short weeks when GT World Challenge America travels to the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, widely regarded as one of the premier road courses in the country. Action kicks off with practice on Friday, May 17, before concluding with Race 2 on May 19. Stay tuned to instagr.am/regulatorracing and tune in to YouTube.com/GTWorld to follow along!
From the Drivers
Jeff Burton
“I like that we do the alternative to everyone else, who has the Pro going first and the Am going second. I like the push that it gives me to do a different job for the team and for Philip. What I guess I haven’t liked in both weekends so far is that I haven’t gotten up to pace as quickly as I want to. I find my best pace over the course of my stint, but it’s taking me 6 or 7 laps to work up to that, which puts a lot of pressure on Phil for the second half of our strategy. We all know he’s the fastest guy out there; he’s setting track records everywhere we go. I think we’re going to continue to do this until we think it’s not beneficial for us. That being said, we had a podium this weekend and were moving towards another one before Phil had that contact with Luca [Mars] in the No. 93, which was just one of those no-fault things that happens in racing. Tough last race, but the podium was proof that we don’t need a safety car to get results. We have the speed, I like COTA, and I think we’re going to have an opportunity to show our true potential in a couple of weeks.”
Philip Ellis
“I think the weekend itself was very positive, we were on the podium in Race 1 and should’ve been on the podium again in Race 2. I actually think we could’ve won Race 2, to be honest. If everything would’ve stayed clean. We were quite unlucky to hit that car that crashed out by himself, which basically ended our race right as we were starting to make serious progress. I think we made a good step forward again as a team and showed that our strategy works, even without a safety car coming out. It’s a positive in general, and we’ll hope to take that to COTA.”
David Askew, Team Owner
“Regulator Racing is the sister team of DXDT. They work out of the same shop, but all of their management, preparation, and decisions are made independently, which is why it was so great to see a podium for the team in their first race weekend. Jeff [Burton] has been driving with us for a couple years now, and he’s a great driver to work with because he’s focused on one thing: winning. It’s always a challenge to respond to that goal because the competition is so good here in GTWCA, but the help that we’ve had from Mercedes-AMG has helped us ensure that the No. 91 is one of the fastest cars on track. We’ve had great help from Philip Ellis, who’s one of the fastest AMG drivers in the world, and we have engineering help with Markus Röhrich, who has engineered race-winning AMGs all over the globe. With the new team, it’s provided us an opportunity to really focus on one car and one driver pair, and it’s been kind of refreshing for me to kind of step away from that and watch them go to work.”