Page 9 - 2021CalSpeedMagazineMay

ROUND 5 - MAY 22
The month of May brought with it the halfway point in the 2021 IronMan Series, and with it, the deciding round of the Winter Series sub-championship. The best
four out of five contests in the first half of the season would end on the Tecnico track. A driver favorite, both in terms of it challenge, and its racing. Four drivers still had a shot at the winter title: including leader coming in Michael Hazlewood, Paulo Franca, Ayrton Demoss, and Round #4 winner, Sam Hunt. As has been the case this season, the invert was a deep one, with many of the protagonists for the title starting in the back third of the field.
John Rice would lead the field away at the start of the one- hour race, with some fresh faces in tow behind with Chris Fox, Adrian Comstock, and James Lieser following through the esses for the first time. Starting in the fifth spot was regular IronMan Series title contender Sean Fite, and by lap six he worked his way past John Rice to take over the top spot. Rice would hang right in his draft; however, and the two would break away from the rest of the field. Fite not putting a wheel wrong, and Rice dutifully pushing to keep the advantage alive. The pair would stay in lockstep through about 35 laps, until traffic broke them up slightly, but all the while their advantage had been dwindling.
Behind them and coming up from 18th on the start was Winter Series hopeful and former IronMan champ Paulo Franca, who had been scything his way to the front through the first half of the race. Getting hooked up with regular two- hour mate Jose da Silva certainly helped, and the pair would log some of the quickest laps of the day in their pursuit of the front. When the aforementioned lead duo finally got broken up a bit in traffic around lap 35, Franca was only about a second rear of Rice, but then he too would lose his drafting partner in the same traffic.
When Fite finally blinked first in the pit stop game on lap 40, Franca had reached the back bumper of Rice, and both drivers would follow suit in the pit stop game one lap after Fite. This is where things changed in favor of Franca, as not only was he able to find his way around Rice during the one extra lap, but he would also leapfrog Fite as well, picking up two spots in one lap. Once Franca’s former draft partner made his own pit stop from the lead a couple laps later, the new order was Franca, da Silva, Fite and Rice. Both Franca and Fite would leave their final pit stop for the final lap, and for the latter, it would end up costing him the final podium spot. Rice -who had pit about ten laps prior- would leapfrog Fite to claim his first career IronMan podium in third. Well up the road from Rice was da Silva, who would bring home his first podium since the two-hour race last fall, but also a new track record in the process. The big winner on the day though was indeed Paulo Franca, who not only brought things home for his second win of the season, but took over the overall point lead, and with it the Winter Series title.