The opening two rounds of the 2016 Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge season have delivered a few hard knocks for Honda North American Racing Team (HART). The team’s two Honda Civics tangled during the season-opening BMW Performance 200 at Daytona, and one was badly damaged on the final lap at Sebring.

The good news is that drivers Chad Gilsinger and Michael Valiante stand second in the Street Tuner (ST) standings, only four points out of the lead, with the team’s best part of the schedule yet to come for the Ohio-based operation.

“We were running third when we had that incident at Daytona,” Gilsinger said. “We dropped back to 11^th after the hit, and got back to finish seventh.”

Gilsinger and Valiante then finished second in the Sebring 150 despite a scary incident on the closing lap. Valiante was hit hard in the passenger door when a competitor lost his brakes, though he was able to recover and make it to the checkered flag without losing a position.

“The car had sustained left-side bodywork damage earlier in the weekend from an incident in practice,” Gilsinger said. “But the last-lap hit by did significant damage to the door bars of the cage. We didn’t even know if the car was fixable following the race. We took the car to the cage shop the day after we got back from Sebring. They inspected the car there and then took it to a cage shop, where they pulled the cage back out to get everything in the right location. Then they replaced all the door bars. The car was fixable and it’s repaired.”

Gilsinger and Valiante, drivers of the No. 93 HART Honda Civic Si, have 56 points, trailing only Sarah Cattaneo and Owen Trinkler, who won at Sebring in the No. 44 CRG-I Do Borrow Honda Civic Si. HART also fields the No. 92 Civic Si, which placed 24^th at Daytona driven by Steve Eich and Kevin Boehm. Eich ran as high as third in the Sebring 150 before finishing seventh with Cameron Lawrence.

Now, the team faces another hurdle in the before getting into the meat of its schedule – the Continental Monterey Grand Prix powered by Mazda at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca on Saturday, April 30.

“Mazda Raceway is probably the worst race track for the Honda Civic all season,” Gilsinger explained. “We’re going there hoping for a solid top-10 finish – hopefully, better than that – but that track is fairly low grip and it favors the Mazdas a little more. They’ve won there the last four years – which is probably why they call it Mazda Raceway! We know it’s going to be a tough track, which is why we want to get out with as many points as we can, and more importantly for the team, we want to get out of there without any damage.”

After Mazda Raceway, the remainder of the schedule looks much more favorable.

“The next four tracks work really well for us,” Gilsinger said. “We typically do well at Watkins Glen (July 2), Road America (August 6) and Canadian Tire Motorsport Par (July 9), and Lime Rock (July 23) is a decent track for us where a top-five is doable. Then VIR (August 27) and COTA (Sept. 17) are OK, but then we usually do well at Road Atlanta (the season finale on Sept. 30).”

HART has been with the Continental Tire Challenge since its inaugural season in 2001. With the exception of Valiante, the team is made up of Honda of America manufacturing or research and development employees who work on the cars following their regular working hours at Honda’s Transportation Research Center in East Liberty, Ohio. The team also fields cars in SCCA and NASA club events. Drivers who show potential at that level – along with their commitment to the team – are then considered for opportunities in the team’s No. 92 car.

“The biggest factor really comes down to schedules,” Gilsinger said. “Racing is not our fulltime job, and not everyone is able to make it to every race weekend due to work commitments.”