Corey Fergus blog: Stepping up

The 2016 Pirelli World Challenge season is about to start and we have some big plans this year. I am moving up from the TC class to the GT Cup class! The Porsche dealership I work for, Byers Imports, bought a new Porsche GT3 Cup car for us to go racing in 2016. How awesome is that?!

They are big believers in walking the walk: we race what we sell. My typical Porsche customer is a race fan and is familiar with Porsche racing heritage, so this is a win-win, but I know how lucky I am to have this opportunity.

We're back with the same crew again and running our own team. The GT3 Cup car is a big step up. It has about 200 more horsepower and weighs over 200 pounds less than the Cayman we raced last year. It also has a sequential transmission with paddle shifters. It's very cool. Unlike last year, where I was in the fastest class in the group, I'm now the slowest class in the group.

We'll be racing in the GT Cup class, which is solely Porsche GT3 Cup cars and is basically a spec class. But, we'll be racing with all the GT cars in the top tier group in PWC. It's going to be a busy track, with around 40-50 cars in every race.

Because it's a spec class, we can't do too much to the car. No spring changes, no shock changes, no differential tweaks, nothing. It really puts an emphasis on preparation for both the team and driver. Any advantage you can get you need to take.

Since we haven't run one of these cars before we needed to get some testing under our belt to learn more about it. We decided to head down to Carolina Motorsports Park for a two day test at the end of January. I would say it was pretty successful. I got comfortable behind the
wheel and the team got more familiar with making setup changes and in particular, finding out how certain changes affected the behavior of the car and in what way.

We still have at least one more test scheduled before the season starts and possibly two. Our focus is to understand this car inside and out so we can be ready to win from the get go. Like last year, our goal is to win another championship and we need to make sure we're in a position to do so.

The first race of the season is March 3-6 at Circuit of the Americas, one of my favorite tracks. I'm really looking forward to debuting our car. Hope to see some of you there!