Dicken Climbed Steep Learning Curve in Rookie 2015 ST Season

Matt Dicken made his professional racing debut in 2015 in the IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge, driving the No. 36 Strategic Wealth Motorsports Porsche Cayman in the Street Tuner (ST) class. 

He launched his new team in partnership with Goldcrest Motorsports, and landed Corey Lewis as his regular co-driver three races into the season. 

Strategic Wealth Racing finished 14th in the ST team standings, with a best finish of ninth in consecutive races at Road America and VIRginia International Raceway, followed by a 10th-place finish at Circuit of The Americas.Looking ahead, Dicken looks to return for a full 2016 ST schedule with Lewis and Goldcrest Motorsports under the Strategic Wealth Racing banner.A native of Goshen, Kentucky, Dicken is the founder of Strategic Wealth Designers, a financial services firm working to help both retirees and pre-retirees secure their financial futures. He is a national coach and mentor for financial advisors and CPAs. His “safer money” approach to investing, coupled with his track record (pun intended) of success, has made him a prominent authority on television, radio and many publications. Dicken took time to talk about his first season competing in the Continental Tire Challenge.Matt, how were your experiences racing in the IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge for the first time?“It was a really fun but challenging first season. Prior to this year I did a couple of year of club racing. Looking back, it might have been a bit premature – I could have used another year doing club racing, but nonetheless we found ourselves here and continued to fight through it. We ended up having a decent season. I think that they call it a ‘rookie season’ for a reason. There are so many unknowns and things that you have to learn. With me running a business and being busy between each of the rounds, it was definitely something that took me a while to get used to. Now I know going into next season kind of what to expect. Hopefully, we learned a lot this past season and can apply it to next year.“This past year was a good experience. It was more competitive than I thought it was going to be. I knew there were some talented teams and talented drivers, but ST was unbelievable, and it was fun to be out there and mix it up with them. Now we’re going to do everything we can possibly do so we can go out and be able to fight with some of those front runners as well.”What was the biggest thing you learned over the course of the season?“Probably just the fact that when you show up for the first session of the weekend – whether it’s the first practice session or a test and tune (promoter’s test day) – you’ve got to be ready to go. If you start off the first session kind of slow, or fighting with the setup, trying to get up to speed, you’re going to be behind for the rest of the weekend. The drivers and the teams are so good that you don’t have the luxury of having an off-session or an off-day. If you get behind, it’s so difficult to recover, because everybody is so talented. That was probably the biggest adjustment I had to make. Especially the first few rounds, because there are big gaps in the schedule. I would do a race weekend and then go home to run my businesses, meet with clients, fulfill commitments and things of that nature, and then the next thing I know is I’m back on a plane and have to be ready to go (at the track) at 8:30 in the morning or something like that. That was my biggest struggle, being mentally prepared to go fast right out of the box, especially since I was getting little to no track time in between the rounds. It was definitely an adjustment, getting up to speed.”At Lime Rock Park, you took on the role of finishing driver. Why did you do that, and what did you learn from the experience of racing against the other finishing drivers?“It showed me how good and how talented the entire field is. I had never been to Lime Rock, and we had a pretty tight schedule that weekend, so we had limited running. We knew that it was going to be a struggle. Since we felt it was not going to be the best track for the Cayman, and with me having little experience, we felt it would be good for my co-driver Corey Lewis to do the qualifying and try to get it as far up as he could before I got in the car, and then let me close it out and see if I could hold on and salvage a good day. It was going according to plan (Lewis led several laps), but we had a slow pit stop – we had a problem with one of the tires – so I came down a little further down in the pack than our plan (not getting a caution flag also hurt the strategy). It was tough. But having done it for the first time, if it makes sense for the strategy to do it again next year, I know what to expect. Those last 20 minutes – especially running combined with the GS cars – made it wild. It was exciting. “I’m a little biased, but I feel that the IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge has some of the best racing out there. Out there, the IMSA WeatherTech Championship is excellent, but if you go beyond that, I think Continental Tire is some of the best racing out there. It’s fun to watch as a fan – and I grew up being a fan of racing before deciding to pursue this as a passion. To be actually out there racing with the closers was certainly an exciting challenge and experience.”How is your relationship with Corey Lewis?“We brought him in during a test and tune day, and was immediately two or three seconds faster than we had been running. After that experience, we made the decision to go ahead and make the change, bringing him in for the rest of the year. He and I gelled really well. He helped me get a lot better as a driver’s coach. We’re planning on doing some things and doing some testing in the upcoming weeks during this short ‘off-season,’ and then do some things next seasons in between rounds to make sure I’m not getting rusty between some of the big gaps in the schedule.”Will you continue working with Goldcrest Motorsports in 2016?“Yes. That’s one of the things that I’m real excited about. I’ve only been driving about five years – counting driver education – and every year it’s been a different car, or a different series. I’ve haven’t had back-to-back seasons where it’s been consistent.  Obviously, with some of the exciting new cars coming into the series next year there are some that I’d love to drive. We considered making a change, but I ultimately decided that it would be good to take everything that we’ve learned this season and do exactly the same program. Same team, same drivers, same car – and hopefully we’ll have a better showing next year. After 2016, who knows? We might stay in ST or take a look at GS, maybe even the WeatherTech Championship.”