PCCNA: Sabré Cook ends her campaign with top-10 finish at Circuit of the Americas

Sabré Cook completed her season in Porsche Carrera Cup North America with a strong showing at Circuit of the Americas, where the Shift Up Now athlete repaid the faith shown by her partners and team to end the season with an excellent ninth place result in the season finale.

Photo credits: ERA Media

Sabré Cook completed her season in Porsche Carrera Cup North America with a strong showing at Circuit of the Americas. A determined effort from Cook and Era Motorsport allowed her to line up on the grid after an unfortunate incident at Road Atlanta.

Cook repaid the faith shown by her partners and team to end the season with an excellent ninth place result in the season finale where she was consistently challenging amongst the top-10.

After being caught up in an incident not of her own making at the previous round at Road Atlanta, a superb job from Sabré and her partners enabled her to enter the Porsche Carrera Cup North America season finale at Circuit of the Americas.

Her team, Era Motorsport, also worked incredibly hard to prepare a car for the event and Cook was looking to repay her team with a strong end to the campaign.Prior to the weekend, Sabré had finished over half her races inside the top-10, with a best result of eighth coming on four separate occasions.

The race weekend began with a solitary practice session on Friday afternoon with the drivers having just thirty-minutes to tune their cars ahead of qualifying. With the session uninterrupted, Cook was able to make progress throughout the session and complete 12 laps. Sabré’s fastest time placed her 13th overall, 12th in the Pro class and gave her a good foundation for the remainder of the event.

After an encouraging opening day at Circuit of the Americas, Cook was aiming to continue this progress into qualifying on Saturday. It was a session of improvement for the Era Motorsport driver who was able to shave tenths of a second off her best time with each run. At the end of the session, Cook’s quickest lap time of a 2:07.787 placed her 13th overall, 12th in the Pro class, while setting the fifth fastest sector three time overall.

Photo credits: ERA Media

Cook lined up on the seventh row of the grid for the opening race of the weekend on Saturday afternoon. She was immediately looking to make up places with a confident move to the inside of turn one. This allowed the Era Motorsport driver to clear the Pro-Am machine of Alan Metni to move into 12th position overall at the end of the first lap. The safety car was then deployed as Matt Halcome had rolled and his car required recovering.

As racing resumed, Cook made a good restart and held her position while looking to move inside the top-10. Less than one lap of green flag racing was completed before a second safety car period was necessary as John Gilliland had stopped on the exit of the first turn. When the green flag was displayed, just twelve-minutes of the race remained and Sabre was looking to end the race on a high.

On the restart lap, Cook mounted a challenge on Michael McCann and ran side-by-side with the Kellymoss driver. Although she was unable to complete the pass, she continued to apply pressure while running in a competitive train of Pro class cars.

The race then came to an early conclusion under the safety car as contact was made between Peter Atwater and Todd Parriott with Cook initially classified in 12th position. However, a penalty assessed to the Era Motorsport driver for a false start saw her fall to 20th position overall, 16th in the Pro class.

Photo credits: ERA Media

Looking to bounce back in the season finale, Cook’s consistent qualifying effort saw her line up from 13th on the overall grid. The Era Motorsport driver made a clean start and although fell one position to 14th overall, the leading group of drivers were all running together. On lap two, she was able to clear the Pro-Am machine of Efrin Castro and could now focus forward on bridging the deficit to her fellow Pro class drivers.

Cook quickly built a gap behind and this was important as she closed in on Yves Baltas and Pro-Am leader Alan Metni who was enjoying an excellent weekend at Circuit of the Americas. As she maintained both a fast and consistent pace, Sabré had to be mindful of dirt and debris which caused issues for a number of drivers behind. The middle portion of Cook’s race was quiet as she attempted to bridge the gap ahead of her while targeting a top-10 result to end the season.

Into the final stages of the race, Jake Pedersen began closing in and Sabré had to respond from late pressure applied by the Kellymoss driver. On lap 15, a spin from Elias De La Torre required Cook to be on her toes to avoid the stopped car at the top of a blind crest.

This overtake put her up to 11th position and with a number of fast laps to close out the race, she held this position to the checkered flag. Following post-race penalties assessed to a number of her rivals, Cook was promoted to ninth position and scored her ninth top-10 finish of the campaign.

It was superb effort for the Shift Up Now athlete and the Era Motorsport team to line up on the grid at Circuit of the Americas and Cook delivered two strong performances. An unfortunate penalty in race one took away a solid haul of points, however Sabré was able to finish the season with a controlled drive to ninth to close out the campaign.

Although she has faced a number of challenges in 2024, Cook has overcome adversity with a determined spirit while competing in one of the strongest one-make championships in the world.