Rookie PWC champ Parente starting even faster in Year 2

Alvaro Parente came into Pirelli World Challenge cold last year. The Portuguese driver had not raced a season in the U.S., and had only raced on one track the series visited, Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in A1GP a decade prior. Thrown into K-PAX Racing's McLaren 650S, he showed exactly why he is a McLaren factory driver by winning the GT championship, so you could say he did all right.

For 2017 he is the constant at K-PAX, defending his title with new teammates – Bryan Sellers in GT and Mike Hedlund in GTA. He'll see only one new track, Virginia International Raceway, where the team has already tested. He can hit the ground running – and has won two of the first three races this season to lead the points. Last year, he took his first win in Round 5 at Long Beach, but only after Johny O'Connell was disqualified for a technical infraction on his Cadillac. This season he won in the opening round at St. Petersburg and took the outright victory at Long Beach. It's a pretty good start to a title defense.

"Last year, everything was new," said Parente (pictured). "It was my first time racing full time in the United States. Two or three details were quite different from what I'm used to in Europe; but the main thing – go fast, work hard with the engineers, get the setup right – the fundamentals are the same, aren't they? So I just had to adapt quickly. In Pirelli World Challenge it's great, because there's only one driver, so a lot of track time to learn."

Now he knows the tracks, knows the series, and knows the competition. He can get straight to business.

"Coming as defending champion, I'm as motivated as last year, as focused as ever. I have to do a similar type of job, but knowing already what the tracks are like and how we started and how we think the setup is going to work on that track. The biggest bonus is I can work on the car from lap one," he said.

Of course, there are some new challenges for the 2017 season. The big one is the addition of SprintX, where he'll team with British driver Ben Barnicoat, who has experience in Blancpain GT Endurance Cup and this year is driving a Strakka Racing McLaren in Blancpain GT Sprint Cup with Parente. The other significant change is new teammates in Sellers and Hedlund.

"They're two great guys, and we've gotten along well since the first test," Parente said. "Bryan has very good ideas and he's got a lot of experience in sports cars, racing for Falken all those years [in the American Le Mans Series]. We seem to get along and share ideas on what the cars do. We obviously drive a little bit different, but when the car goes fast with a setup change, we all share that information. It's good to have such talented guys with me on the team to try to make us go faster all the time. Sellers joined him on the podium at Long Beach, finishing third, and sits fourth in the points.

Pre-season testing at VIR aside, the track and its long back straight will pose some difficulties for the McLarens, which usually suffer at the top end compared to come of the competition. That's not lost on Parente, who realizes that he has made good in the opening rounds on street circuits where the car works.

"These last two tracks suited our car quite well, and when you go to tracks where it suits your car, you better perform and get the results," he noted. "That's what we managed to do these first two races. We worked hard for it; let's see the next ones. There are a few tracks where we're probably not going to be the strongest, and there are going to be some other tracks still where we're going to be good. We've got to take advantage when the car is working well."

Parente takes his championship lead into the next rounds at VIR on April 28-30, which will also be the first SprintX rounds.