THE MOTORSPORT PRIZE OF A LIFETIME
SUNOCO WINNERS TACKLE DAYTONA
It was one of those pinch yourself moments. Kyle Reid was coming out of Turn 4 at Daytona International Speedway strapped into a BMW M4 GT4 and about to start his first international motor race.
Not bad for a Mini racer who couldn’t have dreamt of competing on the high banks of the self-styled ‘World Center of Motorsport’ at the start of last season.
But it very much became the 29-year-old Scot’s dream through the 2018 season. Winning the Sunoco 240 Challenge and its prize, a drive on the Daytona 24 Hours support bill last month, became the raison d’etre of his season.
Reid, a stalwart of the Scottish Mini ranks, wasn’t planning a full season last year as he ventured down south to race in the Cooper Pro class of the Mini Challenge UK. He wasn’t entertaining thoughts of a tilt at the title, let alone even thinking of Sunoco honours. A chance exchange between a Sunoco representative and Reid’s father at the opening round of the series at Donington Park last April changed that.
Reid had just won both races and notched up a pole and a fastest lap — so a big haul of challenge points — when the Sunoco man pointed up at the podium and suggested to the stranger standing next to him that the guy spraying the champagne looked like a short-odds bet to win the Sunoco 240 Challenge. That man happened to be Reid Sr, and it resulted in some soul searching by the Reid family that evening.
The plan for 2018 was for Reid to contest only selected events in his first season of racing outside of Scotland with the family SCK Motorsport squad. He works in the oil industry in Africa, so he wasn’t able to do all the rounds and hadn’t even signed up with Sunoco.
“I’m out of the country for six months of the year, working one month on, one month off,” explains Reid. “I contacted my rig manager on Monday morning and he said he’d support me. He offered to fly me back to the UK so I could do the three races I was going to miss. I then got on the phone to Sunoco. Thankfully I had until the Monday after Donington to register.
“It turned into an amazing season. It went from not planning to do all the races, to thinking I could win the title and the Challenge, and then get to Daytona. Most of the tracks were new to me; I’d only ever raced at Knockhill, Oulton Park and Donington before the season started.”
Reid notched up 12 wins from 17 races aboard his Mini R50 Cooper last year and made it onto the podium on three more occasions. And in the two races in which he didn’t collect silverware he finished fourth and sixth.
The sixth came at the penultimate weekend of the championship at Cadwell Park. The Mini title was as good as won, but he still needed vital Sunoco points as he battled with the best amateur drivers from the British GT Championship and the frontrunners in the Radical Challenge.
“Maybe the pressure was getting to me,” he says. “I wasn’t really thinking about the Mini title. It was all about the Challenge for me. To be honest, I quickly forgot about winning the championship.”
The prize drive in the opening round of the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge, formerly known as the Continental Tire Sportscar Challenge, came with the Fast Track/classic BMW squad. He wouldn’t get behind the wheel of its M4 until the official pre-race test at Daytona, known as the Roar, in early January. It was a massive step up for a driver who’d never previously raced a rear-wheel-drive car.
“I had done some work on the simulator before heading over to Daytona, but it was still a massive step going from a 130bhp front-wheeldrive Mini to a rear-drive BMW with something like 450bhp,” he says. “Going into Turn 1 at 173mph was a bit of an eye-opener.
“When I arrived at Daytona for the first time, I was about 1.6s off my teammates, but by the time I left after the test, we were all within a few tenths of each other, so the team was super happy.”
The team continued to be impressed with the newcomer through practice and picked Reid to qualify the car, which meant that he would be the starting driver. On a fresh set of Michelin tyres, Reid found 2.2 seconds to put the Bimmer 22nd out of 36 GT4 cars.
Reid managed to move up a couple of positions during the early stages of the four-hour race. He made it as high as 16th before handing over to the first of his team-mates, Jayson Clunie.
The car briefly led the race before third driver, Fast Track’s pro and also its team manager, Toby Grahovec, collected a spinning car. Four laps were lost to repairs, and after another delay with a puncture, the car ended up in 30th position at the chequered flag.
These issues meant, however, that Reid was strapped back in to finish the race, completing a second 45-minute stint. The team didn’t get the result it was looking for, but for Reid the whole event was a rewarding experience.
“I’ve gained so much out of doing Daytona apart from just the thrill of racing here,” he says. “Things like working with a data engineer were all new to me. And to come away as the quickest driver in the car was quite an achievement.”
Reid isn’t sure what the future holds for him, but the phone has started ringing since he claimed the Sunoco 240 Challenge.
That’s an indication, he says, of the prestige it now holds in its eighth year of existence. British GT teams have been in touch, though he stresses that the finance isn’t available to take up any of the offers. He’s also been asked back to the USA with Fast Track, but that again will be dependent on finance.
“I’m not committed to anything at the moment, but the plan is to try to get out on the TOCA package this year,” says Reid. “I want to do at least one round in the Renault UK Clio Cup and try to get out in the JCW class of the Mini Challenge as well, but of course I want to get back out in some kind of GT car again.”
Reid wasn’t the only Sunoco winner racing at Daytona last month. BRDC British Formula 3 champion Linus Lundqvist competed in the main event after coming out on top in the Sunoco Whelen Challenge in 2018. The 19-year-old Swede followed in a line of illustrious predecessors, whose number include ex-sauber Formula 1 driver Felipe Nasr. The Brazilian is now one of the stars of the IMSA Sportscar Championship, which kicks off with the Daytona 24 Hours, and won last year’s title together with Eric Curran.
Lundqvist wasn’t at the wheel of a prototype like the Sunoco winners that have gone before him, rather a GT Daytona class Lamborghini Huracan GT3. The stakes are ever higher at the front of the field, reckons Anders Hildebrand, the architect of the Sunoco scheme as the British importer of Sunoco racing fuels, and throwing a challenge winner into one of the Daytona Prototype international (DPI) racers competing for outright honours is a “bit like asking a League One or Two footballer to play in a World Cup Final”.
Lundqvist managed two stints early in the race aboard the Precision Performance Motorsport Lambo, which subsequently spent nearly three and a half hours in the pits undergoing a clutch change. The Swede would get back behind the wheel, but only when the safety car was out as heavy rain turned the IMSA series opener into a stop-start affair that was red-flagged twice. The car was classified down in 18th position in class after the results were declared.
Lundqvist reckons he’s taken a lot away from his international sportscar debut. He managed just 49 laps across the pre-event Roar test and practice for the race, yet he notched up the car’s fastest race lap. He outpaced Milos Pavlovic, a Lamborghini regular and also a British F3 racer in his time, by 0.6s, setting his race best when conditions were not at their quickest.
“I’ve really enjoyed myself here and every lap you do in a racing car is experience gained,” says Lundqvist. “My plan is to race in some kind of international F3 series this season, but I can definitely see myself doing the odd one-off here and there in sportscars if the opportunity arises.
“I think it will help make me a more complete driver and I hope one day I can come back to Daytona.”