Sunday Group Management

Barbosa, Fittipaldi Looking to Parlay Sneak Preview into Chevrolet Sports Car Classic Success

May 30, 2017

Staff Report

IMSA Wire Service

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship drivers Joao Barbosa and Christian Fittipaldi participated in a Media Hot Lap Day at Detroit’s Belle Isle Park last Tuesday as a prelude to this Saturday’s Chevrolet Sports Car Classic.

The race will be televised live on FS2 beginning at 12:30 p.m. ET, with a rebroadcast on FS1 airing at 9 a.m. ET Sunday. IMSA Radio also will have live coverage throughout the weekend, including its race broadcast airing online at IMSA.com, SiriusXM and locally in the Detroit market on WCSX FM 94.7.

The co-drivers of the No. 5 Mustang Sampling Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R. zoomed around the track with media and sponsor executives in Cadillac ATS-V street cars, reaching speeds of up to 120 miles per hour. The Media Hot Lap Day also allowed Fittipaldi and Barbosa a glimpse of Belle Isle’s new layout, featuring longer straightaways heading to Turn 3, as well as the track’s new surface, which was shaved down to remove the bumpy ride that plagued drivers in years past.

Heading into the WeatherTech Championship’s fifth race of the season, the No. 5 Cadillac duo currently ranks second in the Prototype standings, 22 points behind brothers Jordan and Ricky Taylor who are undefeated so far in 2017 in their own No. 10 Konica Minolta Cadillac DPi-V.R.

“We’ve had a couple good races, but not an excellent race this year,” Fittipaldi said. “Obviously, we’re looking for an excellent race. We’re going to come here and by all means, try to win the race. It would not be only really important for the team, but also really important for Cadillac, being their home city here.”

Cadillac is one of 76 sponsors for next week’s Detroit Grand Prix, an all-time high for the event weekend which prides itself on contributing to the city’s rebuilding process. Before the hot lap session, Barbosa and Fittipaldi took in the sights of “new Detroit” via the new QLINE, a trolley system which opened in the city earlier this month. According to the drivers, the landscape “without a doubt” has changed dramatically since they first began racing in Detroit.

For now though, the sights of new Detroit will have to wait for the drivers, as their focus turns to this weekend’s event and an opportunity to gain ground in the point standings.

“We were on pole the last two years and we’re going to try and duplicate that performance, but definitely try to finish on the top spot,” Fittipaldi said. “I’m pretty sure all the other teams are thinking the same thing right now, so it is what it is, but we just have to worry with our stuff and do our job in the best way possible.”

Breaking the Taylors’ undefeated streak will not be easy for the drivers of the No. 5, nor any of the other pairings in the Prototype ranks. As was the case for the previous two WeatherTech Championship races – the BUBBA burger Sports Car Grand Prix at Long Beach in April and the Advance Auto Parts Sportscar Grand Prix earlier this month at Austin’s Circuit of The Americas – the No. 10 enters Detroit as the defending race winner.

Joining Fittipaldi and Barbosa in pursuit of the Taylors are 2015 Belle Isle winners Dane Cameron & Eric Curran in the No. 31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac, a pair of DPi entries from both Tequila Patrón ESM and Mazda Motorsports as well as the global LM P2 cars of Visit Florida Racing and PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports.

In the Prototype Challenge (PC) category, Performance Tech Motorsports will attempt to continue its own domination of 2017. The team has won from the pole in all three races completed by PC this season.

Driver James French finished last year’s race at Belle Isle in third with then-teammate Kyle Marcelli, and qualified on the class pole at Detroit in 2015. Now paired up with Patricio O’Ward, he and the team are looking forward to getting another go at Motown.

“We’d like to see James win pole again,” said Performance Tech Motorsports owner Brent O’Neill. “As young as Pato is, he’s a really talented driver so I don’t think he’ll have any problems learning the track. It’s only a 100-minute race so there isn’t room for error. Your pit strategy has to be perfect and the lap times have to be consistent. You need to be on it the whole race.”

Performance Tech will be challenged in PC by a pair of ORECA FLM09s from BAR1 Motorsports, with Ryan Lewis joining Don Yount in the No. 20 and a pair of yet to be announced drivers slotted for the No. 26.

The Chevrolet Sports Car Classic will take the green flag at 12:40 p.m. ET on Saturday, June 3. Live coverage of the race begins at 12:30 p.m. ET on FS2, with live in-car cameras, timing & scoring and IMSA Radio available on IMSA.com.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – “We’re reppin’ IMSA,” says Sage Karam of himself and Michael Shank Racing and their efforts in the 101st Indianapolis 500.

Karam is a full-time IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship driver, sharing the No. 14 3GT Racing Lexus RC F GT3 in the GT Daytona (GTD) class with Scott Pruett, a sports car racing legend and veteran IndyCar and Indy 500 racer. Karam is driving the No. 24 DRR Mecum Auctions Chevrolet IndyCar for Dreyer & Reinbold Racing and qualified 21st for his fourth start in the legendary Memorial Day weekend race.

Michael Shank Racing, meanwhile, is making its Indianapolis 500 debut this year with the No. 50 Michael Shank Racing with Andretti Autosport Honda for driver Jack Harvey. Rookie Harvey starts 27th in the 33-car field, exactly two rows behind Karam. Shank’s team fields a pair of full-time Acura NSX GT3s in the WeatherTech Championship GTD class, competing head-to-head with Karam’s team among many others.

“It’s awesome to finally get that opportunity,” said team owner Mike Shank of realizing his lifelong dream of competing in the 500. “I came from nothing. To be able to win the Rolex (24 At Daytona), win Petit (Le Mans), do Le Mans (24 Hours) and do the Indy 500, we’re showing the world – I hope – that we are capable of anything.

“We are a racing company and we’re prepared to race anywhere, although my loyalties and my heart lie in sports car racing, because that’s what truly puts us in this position to be considered for all these things. I’ll never leave sports car racing. Maybe I’ll do the Indy 500 each year, potentially, but who knows about that too? It’s just really a thing for me personally, that I wanted to do.”

Shank had been close a time or two in the past before the opportunity finally presented itself this year. He credits his partnership with Honda and Acura as the driving force to make it happen in conjunction with Andretti Autosport.

Make no mistake, however, as it’s the same team that runs the Nos. 86 and 93 Acuras in IMSA that are carrying the load at Indy. During most of the practice days at Indy, about half of Shank’s team was onsite at the Speedway working on the IndyCar, while the other half stayed back in his Ohio shop preparing the Acuras for the Chevrolet Sports Car Classic coming up on June 3 on Detroit’s Belle Isle.

“When we need to do pit stops, I bring the whole team in,” Shank says. “All my IMSA guys are over the wall. I’ll tell you, in IMSA, our pit stops are 25 to 40 seconds long. (Monday), we did a 6.8-second pit stop.

“I was so proud of my guys. We didn’t get to practice on a dummy car back at the shop for weeks on end. My guys learned on the pit lane, in front of God and everybody, (last) Wednesday, fumbling around and figuring it out. By the end of that day, I’m like, ‘Holy cow, I think we’ve got something here.’”

Another source of pride for Shank was the fact that his regular crew chief on the No. 86 Acura, Adam Rovazzini, earned the prestigious Clint Brawner Mechanical Excellence Award, named for the legendary IndyCar crew chief.

“The crew chief from the IMSA program won the Clint Brawner Award,” Shank said. “Forever and always, his name will be on a plaque at the (Indianapolis Motor Speedway) Museum, and he got a good chunk of cash.”

For his part, Karam – who came up through the open-wheel ranks before embarking on his first season of full-time sports car competition this season – credits his experience in IMSA and the No. 14 Lexus for making him a better driver in the IndyCar.

“This is the most comfortable I’ve ever been in an IndyCar and the best I’ve been driving,” Karam said. “I really do credit that to racing with Lexus. I’ve learned a lot as far as how to be patient in the IndyCar, just because – in the Lexus in IMSA – it’s not only one guy in the car. You’ve got a teammate you’ve got to hand the car off to, and you’ve got endurance races.

“You’ve got to be patient, you’ve got to be smart, you can’t make mistakes and you never want to give a damaged car to your teammate, so I’ve learned how to be real mature behind the wheel just from driving sports cars. It’s really applying for me in IndyCar.”

So, when the green flag flies shortly past noon eastern time this Sunday, IMSA fans will be watching the outside of Rows 7 and 9 and rooting those drivers and teams on.

“If we can pull out a good result, it makes IMSA look that much better,” Karam says. “In all honesty, there’s so much talent in IMSA.”

CATCHING UP WITH MARINE VETERAN LIAM DWYER FOR MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND: Flashback to Memorial Day weekend three years ago.

In dramatic fashion, Liam Dwyer claimed his first victory in the IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge at his home track, Lime Rock Park. The former Marine and his co-driver Tom Long, bested the other Street Tuner (ST) class competitors for the victory in their No. 27 Freedom Autosport Mazda MX-5.

The win was a far cry from what the military veteran could have ever expected, considering that in May, 2011 during a tour of duty in Afghanistan, Dwyer stepped on an explosive that resulted in the loss of his left leg and years of recovery time.

“When I first got injured and during my first two years (of recovery), my goal wasn’t to get into a race car, my goal was to learn how to drive again,” Dwyer explained. “I never imagined I would be racing cars. I love cars, I didn’t start club racing until 2013 and the next year, I’m doing three races in the IMSA series and winning.”

Dwyer first enlisted in the Marines after the USS Cole was attacked in October 2000, and was stationed in Okinawa, Japan during the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. Several years later, the Connecticut native actively sought out a combat role with the Marines and served in Iraq until early 2008.

Dwyer then took some time away from the military during which he became more invested in sports cars. His passion, though, quickly took a back seat after receiving a phone call in 2010.

“I got a call from a guy I got deployed with to Iraq saying, ‘We’re putting a team together to go to Afghanistan and I want you on it,’” said Dwyer. “I was in Afghanistan in December 2010 and in May 2011, I stepped on a giant bomb over there that blew off my left leg and injured the remaining limbs of my body.”

Dwyer spent the next several years of his life recovering at Walter Reed Medical Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

“For my first two and a half months at Walter Reed, I was in surgery three times a week,” said Dwyer. “I lost count after my 50th surgery. I don’t know how many surgeries I’m at now because of my injuries. There’s a lot that goes on with it and it feels like eight steps forward, 10 steps back sometimes. But then you’ll take 12 steps forward and only nine steps back, so it’s a slow progression and you’ve got to be very patient with it.”

Patience paid off for Dwyer, as he not only earned the 2014 victory, but went on to capture a special win at Mazda’s “home track” of Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in 2015 with co-driver Andrew Carbonell. The Marine who saved Dwyer’s life back in 2011 also was present as a guest of the team.

Fast-forwarding to 2017, Dwyer’s ST team is one of only a handful to finish in the top 10 each race so far. For Memorial Day weekend, he has different plans this year with a break now in the series schedule – a relaxing weekend in Florida.

“My family is from Middlebury, Connecticut, and they have a Memorial Day parade that I used to be a part of,” Dwyer said. “Being that I’m now in Florida, I most likely will not be up there for Memorial Day, but when I am, it’s hot dogs, cookouts, burgers, parades, speeches, hanging out with family. Being that its Connecticut Memorial Day weekend, there’s big racing at Lime Rock. We’ll usually attend those races if I’m up there.”

After already winning on Memorial Day, a victory on Fourth of July weekend at Watkins Glen International would prove to be even more special this year.

“I’ll have a lot family there, but this year we’re having a special guest come to the race,” Dwyer said. “One of the doctors who operated on me, who’s actually done lots of operations on me, and he’s the one I credit for keeping my right leg…he will be there with his family to watch me race. I wanted him to come and see what I do now with the life that he’s given me.”

Bringing his doctor to Watkins Glen is more than a mere gesture for Dwyer, as he hopes to convey a broader message.

“Three days after our season ends in Atlanta later this year, I’ll be going up to Walter Reed and he’ll be doing a pretty awesome surgery on me to hopefully make me even faster,” Dwyer explained. “It also reminds people that yeah, I’m racing now, I’m retired from the military, but my life as an amputee is still ongoing. I still have a lot of procedures I’m going through and it’s always part of the story with me.”

CORE AUTOSPORT WRAPS UP SUCCESSFUL WATKINS GLEN TEST: A number of IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship teams have utilized the nearly one-month break between Circuit of The Americas and next week’s Chevrolet Detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix as an opportunity to make final preparations for the 24 Hours of Le Mans. But even those IMSA teams not fielding cars in the 24-hour endurance classic have been hard at work preparing for the upcoming slate of WeatherTech Championship races, including the next round of the Tequila Patrón North American Endurance Cup.

One of those teams is CORE autosport, who recently tested at Watkins Glen International in preparation for the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen on July 2.

CORE autosport knows a thing or two about what it takes to win Patrón Endurance Cup races, scoring wins in the Rolex 24 At Daytona (2014), Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Fueled by Fresh From Florida (2014, 2016) and the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen (2014). The team also won the Patrón Endurance Cup title in 2014.

But that success all came in the Prototype Challenge (PC) class, where the team was a stalwart dating back to the American Le Mans Series, winning five consecutive class championships between 2011-2015. This season, however, CORE autosport made the move to the GT Daytona (GTD) class with its new No. 54 Porsche 911 GT3 R.

While much of the early part of the season has seen the team getting acclimated to the new car, the test at Watkins Glen represented a chance to turn more laps outside of a race weekend.

“The test was a great opportunity to get our Porsche 911 GT3 R on track at Watkins Glen for the first time ever,” said Colin Braun, who has been with CORE since 2012. “We had great weather both days and [co-driver] Jon (Bennett) and I were able to turn a ton of laps.”

Among those also testing at Watkins Glen were GT Le Mans (GTLM) teams Porsche GT Team and BMW Team RLL, the GTD points-leading No. 33 Riley Motorsports-Team AMG Mercedes AMG GT3 and the No. 43 Keating Motorsports Multimatic-Riley LM P2 car to be shared at Le Mans by WeatherTech Championship regulars Ben Keating, Jeroen Bleekemolen and Ricky Taylor.

For CORE autosport, the test at Watkins Glen was about focusing on the second half of the WeatherTech Championship season and positioning itself for a strong finish to its debut season in the GTD class.

“The Six Hours of The Glen really kicks off the second half of the IMSA season,” added Braun. “We want to make sure we arrive with a strong setup so we can hopefully get a good finish and create some positive momentum going into that second half.”

Before they head to Watkins Glen, CORE autosport competes in the Chevrolet Sports Car Classic on Belle Isle Park in Detroit, Mich. on June 3. The race can be seen live on FS2 beginning at 12:30 p.m. ET.

Circuit of The Americas Post-Race Notebook

Notebook items include:

• No. 3 Corvette Team Parlays COTA Win into GTLM Points Lead
• No. 63 Scuderia Corsa Ferrari Team Taking Similar Approach
• Bodymotion Moving On Up
• COTA Weekend Update

May 8, 2017

Staff Report

IMSA Wire Service

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – With the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GT Le Mans (GTLM) class off until the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen on July 2, the focus for most competitors in the class now shifts fully to the 24 Hours of Le Mans on June 17-18.

The GTLM team clearly carrying the most momentum heading to the Circuit de la Sarthe is Corvette Racing, which has won each of the past three events dating back to the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Fueled by Fresh From Florida in March. The team’s No. 4 Corvette C7.R shared by defending GTLM co-champions Tommy Milner and Oliver Gavin, won last month’s BUBBA burger Sports Car Grand Prix at Long Beach.

The No. 3 Corvette team of Antonio Garcia and Jan Magnussen, however, have the most momentum with victories at Sebring and last weekend’s Advance Auto Parts Sportscar Showdown at Circuit of The Americas. And in all actuality, the No. 3 team would be riding a three-race win streak were it not for an unfortunate, last-lap, last-turn incident in Long Beach.

The victory by Magnussen and Garcia at COTA was well-timed. In addition to providing valuable momentum and vindication for Long Beach, it also vaulted the No. 3 team into the lead in the GTLM point standings, as several of their closest competitors fell out of contention for the victory in the first turn of the first lap in a multi-car incident.

“I think it is the perfect way to come back after what happened at Long Beach,” Garcia said. “We have had four races this year with zero mistakes by Corvette Racing in any of them. That is what it takes to be there if you have the pace to win.”

After entering the weekend two points behind Rolex 24 At Daytona winners Joey Hand and Dirk Mueller, co-drivers of the No. 66 Ford Chip Ganassi Racing Ford GT, Magnussen and Garcia now lead Mueller and Hand by six points, 124-118.

THIS LOOKS FAMILIAR: Much has been made of the recent run of GT Daytona (GTD) class success for the first-year Mercedes-AMG GT3 program, and the No. 33 Riley Motorsports-Team AMG team of Ben Keating and Jeroen Bleekemolen, and with good reason. Keating and Bleekemolen did win their second race of the season last weekend at COTA, and made it three in a row for Mercedes, which also won at Long Beach with No. 50 WeatherTech-Riley Motorsports teammates Cooper MacNeil and Gunnar Jeannette in addition to the No. 33’s wins at Sebring and COTA.

However, 2016 WeatherTech Championship GTD co-champions Christina Nielsen and Alessandro Balzan are showing the same type of consistency this year that helped them win last year’s title. The No. 63 Scuderia Corsa Ferrari 488 GT3 duo picked up their third consecutive podium result with a second-place run in the Advance Auto Parts Sportscar Showdown. They previously finished second at Sebring and third at Long Beach.

“Scuderia Corsa has always performed really well,” said Nielsen after the race. “Today, they executed at the top level. It was an amazing effort by the team, and it was nice to have another podium finish and score some good points for the championship.”

Nielsen and Balzan rode seven podium results from 11 races to the title in 2016.

BODYMOTION MOVING ON UP: Friday’s IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge Circuit of The Americas 120 wreaked havoc for several drivers and teams near the top of the Grand Sport (GS) class point standings.

Both CJ Wilson Racing entries, which entered the weekend 1-2 in points, encountered problems in the race. The team’s No. 35 Porsche Cayman GT4 shared by Damien Faulkner and Russell Ward retired due to a crash, while the No. 33 Porsche co-driven by Marc Miller and Till Bechtolsheimer battled to an eighth-place result.

It was a good day, however, for No. 12 Bodymotion Racing Porsche co-drivers Trent Hindman and Cameron Cassels. The teammates who opened the year with a victory in the four-hour BMW Endurance Challenge at Daytona in January, returned to the podium with a third-place run in the race won by Matt Plumb and Paul Holton in the No. 76 C360R McLaren GT4. That result put them back atop the GS point standings with three of 10 races in the books.

“Today was a full team victory from car preparation, to the set-up, to the strategy, to the guys behind the wall,” said Bodymotion Inc. Competition Director, Geoff Abel. “We had flawless execution all day. What we needed today was points. Today was all about bringing home some points, which we were able to do and have now retaken the points lead.”

The No. 12 teammates now have a total of 86 points, six more than their next closest competitors, Miller and Bechtolsheimer. The next race for the Continental Tire Challenge is the Continental Tire 120 at Watkins Glen International on Saturday, July 1.

COTA WEEKEND UPDATE: In addition to the WeatherTech Championship and the Continental Tire Challenge, two additional IMSA-sanctioned series were in action at Circuit of The Americas. The Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge USA by Yokohama was in action for its fifth and sixth rounds of the season on Friday and Saturday, while the Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America kicked off its 2017 campaign with a pair of races.

Trenton Estep, a 17-year-old from San Antonio, Texas picked up a “home race” victory on Friday night in his No. 3 JDX Racing Porsche 911 in the lead Platinum Cup class, while Victor Gomez IV won the Gold Cup class. Saturday’s second half of the doubleheader saw Ohio’s Corey Fergus take the victory in the No. 00 entry, with Estep hot on his heels. David Ducote took the Gold Cup win in Race #2 in the No. 25 NGT Motorsport Porsche.

In the Lamborghini Super Trofeo series, Richard Antinucci won both races in the No. 16 Lamborghini Huracán fielded by Change Racing. Antinucci was series’ North America Pro driver champion in 2015.

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Pressure Still on Taylor Brothers Heading to Circuit of The Americas

May 1, 2017

Staff Report

IMSA Wire Service

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – You have to go back to 2011 to find a team and driver pairing at the Prototype level of U.S. sports car racing that had as hot a start to the season as Jordan and Ricky Taylor have in their No. 10 Konica Minolta Cadillac DPi-V.R in the 2017 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.

That year, sports car racing legend Scott Pruett and co-driver Memo Rojas opened the GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series season with three consecutive victories in their BMW-powered Daytona Prototype, eventually going on to win the season championship. This year, the Taylor brothers opened the year with back-to-back victories in two of the most prestigious races on the schedule – January’s Rolex 24 At Daytona and the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring in March – and followed it up with a third-straight win in last month’s BUBBA burger Sports Car Grand Prix.

They’ve earned a total of 105 points from those three races and have a 16-point lead over their next closest competitors, two-time WeatherTech Championship Prototype champions Christian Fittipaldi and Joao Barbosa in the No. 5 Mustang Sampling Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R. Despite the strong start, Ricky Taylor is quick to point out that the pressure is still on heading into Saturday’s two-hour, 40-minute Advance Auto Parts Sportscar Showdown on the 3.4-mile Circuit of The Americas in Austin, Texas.

“It’s a 16-point lead right now, but we still want to keep winning races,” said the 27-year-old elder Taylor brother. “We always keep saying, ‘OK, we need one more win and then we’ll be comfortable.’ We said that before Long Beach, and now, we’re saying that again.

“I feel like it’s always going to be like that, because anything can really happen,” he continued. Car counts are a bit higher than they’ve been last year, and there’s just more good cars, so it’s easier to lose points than it has been in years past. If this was 2-3 years ago, I’d say we’d be in cruise mode, but I think we still have to keep the pressure on and I think we still need a couple more really good results and still can’t afford to have a bad one. It’s a position we haven’t been in before, but it’s definitely a little pressure to maintain.”

Saturday’s race will be televised on FS1 in the U.S. on a same-day delay beginning at 7 p.m. ET. Live IMSA Radio commentary and in-car cameras will be available on IMSA.com at 2:25 p.m. ET.

Pressure or not, the No. 10 team is definitely on a roll. That’s a lot of momentum, and if that wasn’t enough, they also won in their last visit to COTA last fall.

“We won last year and finished second the year before, so it’s a track our team has always had some success at, and our cars have always run well there,” said 25-year-old Jordan Taylor. “It’ll be a little bit different this year with the Cadillac. We don’t have any experience on that track yet with this car, so there will be a lot to learn.”

However, as Jordan also points out, “I think of all the teams heading there, we can head there with the most confidence.”

They have confidence, but they also know it won’t be easy. None of their wins this year have been “easy.”

“Each race that we’ve won has been a battle,” Jordan said. “Each race, we’ve gone into the last hour in second place and we’ve had to battle for it.”

But those battles also have made the wins that much more gratifying.

“If we were killing everybody, it would be a lot less satisfying,” said Ricky. “We really have to work for it. There’s a lot of really strong teams and manufacturers involved in the series now. To be winning races at this level makes it really rewarding.”

And just for the record, in the fourth race of that 2011 GRAND-AM season, Pruett and Rojas ended up second. Sounds like the Taylor brothers wouldn’t be surprised by a similar outcome this weekend.

Performance Tech Riding Young Talents to Perfect Start in Prototype Challenge Class

Performance Tech Motorsports team principal Brent O’Neill entered the 2017 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season with a renewed optimism. After three years of being tantalizingly close to a win in WeatherTech Championship competition, recording four runner-up finishes and 13 podiums in the Prototype Challenge (PC) class in that span, O’Neill spent the second half of 2016 putting pieces in place to not only contend for wins, but the PC-class championship as well.

Two races and two wins later, O’Neill is in position to do just that.

Drivers Pato O’Ward and James French enter this weekend’s race at Circuit of The Americas seeking to continue a perfect start to the 2017 season, having won the Rolex 24 At Daytona and Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Fueled by Fresh From Florida in dominating fashion.

“Part of it is putting the right drivers and crew together,” said O’Neill. “From the middle of last year on we were working on that. My goal was to start 2017 on a new platform and we were able to pull it off. Now that we’ve had some success, we just want to keep that rolling.”

“Some success” is an understatement. With full-season drivers O’Ward and French joined by co-drivers Kyle Masson and Nicholas Boulle at Daytona, and Masson again at Sebring, the team’s No. 38 Ric-Man Construction/Neurospine Institute/Cardio Access/AIG Technologies/Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children ORECA FLM09 won the opening two races by a combined 24 laps.

O’Neill credits his talented crop of young drivers as one of the reasons for the early-season turnaround. The average age of the lineup that won the Rolex 24 was 22 years old, and two of the four drivers had never participated in a live pit stop prior to the race.

That was one of many challenges that the team had to overcome to win the Rolex 24. A crash in the Roar Before the Rolex 24 test session earlier that month put the team behind even before the first official practice of the Rolex 24 weekend.

Following the test, O’Neill and the team took the car down to the bare tub back and rebuilt the entire car to get ready for the Rolex 24. Once the race weekend began though the quartet of young drivers and the team’s pit crew ran mistake-free, winning the race by 22 laps.

The encore came at Sebring when an even younger lineup with an average of 20 years old battled over the notoriously treacherous Sebring International Raceway to win the race by two laps.

“The biggest thing about this group of kids that we have right now is they really listen and pay attention,” he added. “They understand the entire package. It’s more than just being fast on the race track, they also have to be good with the engineers, they have to be good with the sponsors.”

With the PC class not competing in the most recent WeatherTech Championship race at Long Beach, the 17-year-old O’Ward and 24-year-old French now set their sights on making it a threepeat to start the season at Circuit of The Americas.

While French finished third in Austin with Performance Tech each of the past two season, O’Ward will make his first start at the track on Saturday, May 6.

That date also signifies another milestone for O’Ward. His 18th birthday.

IMSA News Roundup

Notebook items include:

• Rebuilding From Scratch
• The Best Is Yet To Come
• A Closer Look: Martin Tomczyk
• McLaren’s Speedy First Impression

April 27, 2017

Staff Report

IMSA Wire Service

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – It’s all hands on deck right now at VISIT FLORIDA Racing.

At the team’s shop in Daytona Beach, Florida on Wednesday, Team Owner Troy Flis described the timeline faced by the No. 90 VISIT FLORIDA Multimatic/Riley crew.

“Our engineer flew in today and the guys are making good progress on the car,” Flis said. “Our electrical guy will be here tomorrow to finish up a couple odds and ends but I believe by Friday, the car will be done. We’ll load up Friday night and we’re hoping to test on Monday to shakedown the car on the way to [Circuit of The Americas].”

The VISIT FLORIDA team has been scrambling for almost three weeks to prepare a new car for the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race at Circuit of The Americas (COTA) next week, after an incident at Long Beach in early April forced the team to withdraw from the race. Renger van der Zande was behind the wheel and had just completed his 19th lap during morning practice when the car slammed into the Turn 1 wall, causing irreparable damage to the Multimatic/Riley chassis.

“Right now, it’s still under review,” Flis explained. “We lost the brake pressure in our front brakes and we aren’t positive about what happened there. The car came back in after the incident and there were no lines broken, no visual part failure and a lot of the time there is. We haven’t found the smoking gun and that’s very disheartening to us because we just don’t know.”

What the team does know is that it faces an uphill battle for the rest of the 2017 season. With the Prototype class championship now out of realistic reach, the VISIT FLORIDA team is now focused on learning the ins and outs of its new-for-2017 Multimatic/Riley machine. The team started off the season strong with a third-place finish at Daytona, but an issue at Sebring led to a sixth-place finish.

“Our learning curve is very steep right now and we’re just trying to get the new cars to a competitive level,” Flis said. “It’s not like our old cars where we can just take everything off, bolt it on the other car and go again. Now it’s like every part that you take off, you have to second guess it three times and say ‘What can we do to make this part a little better before we put it back on the car so we can try to get a little more speed or reliability out of it?’”

Flis also acknowledged that the team can afford to take more risks than what their previous strategy would have allowed. Instead of settling for a top-three or top-five finish for solid points, rolling the dice to win races has now climbed up a few rungs on the team’s list of priorities.

“We’ll go for the win every single time to help our partners and try to get exposure,” Flis said. “It’s very hard to keep your partners and everyone upbeat and to keep your team, your drivers and everybody wanting to run up front, even when you’re not being competitive.”

But if there’s any team in the paddock that can do it, Flis is confident in the VISIT FLORIDA group’s ability to keep pushing. He emphasized the resiliency of his crew and the hard work the team has put in to prepare for COTA.

“Everyone on our team is professional so they all know this is part of the business and part of the industry,” Flis said. “For them to get the morale back is when we go back out there and we’re competitive. We have a great blend for the season with what we’re looking to get out of the car and with Marc (Goossens)’s knowledge and Renger’s speed. We’ve got to pick our heads up and on the engineering and management side, we have to give them a product they can win with.”

Even with their extraordinary effort, all eyes will be on the car’s performance heading into COTA, as the group is still unnerved about what caused the incident at Long Beach. Team sponsor VISIT FLORIDA was quick to relay their relief that van der Zande was unhurt in the heavy crash, and Flis and his crew have done everything in their power to prevent a repeat scenario, including collaborating with Mazda Motorsports, which runs the same brake package on its DPi car that uses the same basic chassis.

For now though, all the team can do is pack up its new car and head to the next race.

“It’s going to be an interesting year for sure,” Flis said. “But this team is strong and we’ll keep digging and get to the next one.”

THE BEST IS YET TO COME: Team Owner Bobby Oergel doesn’t mince his words when talking about PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports’ start to the 2017 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season.

“We’re definitely not happy with the results, no,” he said. “What we’re doing is looking forward to better days to come.”

Oergel’s sentiment is understandable, considering his team began the year with an average finish of seventh between three races. That’s not ideal for a team that racked up seven wins and 14 podiums over the preceding two seasons while participating in the WeatherTech Championship’s Prototype Challenge (PC) class.

“We’ve obviously stepped into a bigger ocean,” said Oergel, referring to PR1’s move up to the Prototype ranks from PC this year. “The hardest thing for us so far has been getting some of these checklist items out of the way that have faltered otherwise good runs.”

The team encountered an early issue in the Rolex 24 and suffered a late issue at Sebring, despite showing competitive speed at both events. The recent event on the streets of Long Beach, California saw PR1 earn its best finish of the year, fifth overall.

Onroak Automotive has worked closely with PR1 to develop its brand new LM P2 competitor, the Gibson V8-powered Ligier JS P217, and after the solid run at Long Beach and a winning start to the car’s overseas season, everyone’s eyes are focused forward.

PR1 completed a successful test day at Circuit of The Americas (COTA) in early April and is eager to return to the 3.4-mile, 20-turn circuit on May 4-6 for the fourth WeatherTech Championship race of 2017.

“It’s really about a fresh start,” said Oergel. “As far as the rest of the races and which we’re looking forward to, right now it’s COTA because it’s right in front of us.”

There’s good reason to be looking forward to COTA – if the team’s current pattern of finishes (Daytona – ninth, Sebring – seventh, Long Beach – fifth) continues, PR1 will prove to be a good third place choice for the debut of the IMSA Podium Predictor powered by IHG Rewards Club and could see victory at the following race at Belle Isle.

Wherever the No. 52 Ligier finishes, it will always be the result of a hardworking team led by one of the most hands-on team owners in the WeatherTech Championship paddock, one who’s always willing to jump in and get his hands dirty.

“That’s the piece I truly love – the physical, hands-on portion of it,” Oergel said. “Getting time to be working with my hands, working with the guys in our shop and knowing what’s happening there. From my end of it, there’s no way to know your program better than to be part of what’s going on with it. That’s what I like, that’s what we do, and that’s that.”

A CLOSER LOOK: MARTIN TOMCZYK: Just prior to the one-hour mark in the April 8 BUBBA burger Sports Car Grand Prix at Long Beach, Martin Tomczyk steered the No. 24 BMW M6 GTLM into the race lead.

While the first two races of the 2017 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season had been a struggle for the two-car BMW Team RLL team, it was no surprise to see an M6 at the front of the field. After all, the BMW team earned its second consecutive Long Beach pole last year, and Bill Auberlen and Dirk Werner won in 2015 driving a BMW.

However, some fans may not have expected Tomczyk to be the driver to take the lead. Some might have been asking, “Who is Martin Tomczyk?”

It’s a fair question, as this is the 35-year-old German’s first year competing in the WeatherTech Championship, sharing the No. 24 BMW with American co-driver John Edwards. In fact, it’s his first year racing in the United States at all.

“This year in Daytona was the first time when I hit an American racetrack,” Tomczyk said. “I never did it before. I’ve got the full program this year, so it’s really great.”

It’s really great for anybody to race for a factory team in GTLM. But how did he do it?

Well, he won the 2011 Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (DTM) championship, one of the world’s most competitive touring car series featuring race cars from German manufacturers. It was the best season of a 16-year DTM career for Tomczyk, who parlayed the 2011 DTM title into a BMW factory ride in 2012. At the end of last year, he decided to try something else in 2017 and received a terrific opportunity from BMW, the same manufacturer he raced for in DTM.

“I really looked forward to go over here when I got the offer to do IMSA, especially after I retired from DTM, because I was not happy anymore in DTM,” Tomczyk explains. “Everything got too technical, too political, and actually, you do not have that much here in the States. It’s more pure racing, why I actually drive race cars.”

For nearly 30 minutes in the 100-minute Long Beach race, Tomczyk held the overall race lead due to a pit strategy anomaly with the faster Prototypes. He still led in GTLM after the leading Prototypes restored the traditional order, and Tomczyk appeared to be headed toward a victory when a temporary electrical issue dramatically slowed the No. 24.

Tomczyk and Edwards wound up seventh. However, despite that disappointment, Tomczyk is enjoying his first season of GTLM racing.

“It’s challenging to match yourself as a European driver – especially when you did 16 years of DTM – just to come here and try to follow the flow and do the best out of it,” he said. “On the racetracks here, there’s great drivers, great cars on the track, so the racing is not that much different. It’s just the side effects, all the surrounding things are what’s new for me.”

Those “side effects” include the open paddock and fan-friendly environment at every WeatherTech Championship event. He’s a big fan of it.

“It’s quite open for the fans,” Tomczyk said. “It’s a big, big group and it seems like a big family. I think that’s the way to go for the future of motorsport. It’s changing and you have to go with the flow, and the flow says you have to be more open, more friendly, more family-like, and that is what we are doing here in the States.

“Nevertheless, the racing is something different on the track. I mean, a competitor is a competitor and you try to beat him. But off the track, it’s more open and more friendly.”

McLAREN’S SPEEDY FIRST IMPRESSION: After IMSA announced in August 2016 that the Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge would see a transition to the GT4 technical specifications in its Grand Sport (GS) class, there was a wave of excitement throughout the racing world about what the changes would bring.

Two races into the season, GS has seen a bolstered number of cars battle on track, but there has been one newcomer in particular that has caught the eye of many- the McLaren GT4.

Three teams, C360R, Motorsports In Action and VOLT Racing, were quick to pounce on the new McLaren racecar, which until the end of last year, had only been made for the manufacturer’s internal use and testing only.

“The first five cars all came to America and to run in GS, the first five cars produced,” Paul Holton, driver of the No. 76 C360R McLaren GT4 said. “The only car they made before that was the test car they ran in British GT last year.”

Because the cars are fresh off the production line, each of the three teams have benefited from McLaren’s unwavering support. The manufacturer has sent representatives to each race in order to work with the teams to gather information and improve the car’s performance.

“It’s been exciting because we’ve been able to work really closely with McLaren,’ Holton said. “It’s just a learning process for the entire team to get on the same page with the car, the drivers, the crew and the manufacturer and right now, I’m pretty optimistic.”

For Motorsports In Action (MIA), McLaren’s decision to produce a GT4 car was the primary reason Team Owner Eric Kerub chose to enter IMSA competition. Kerub was formerly the president of TAG Aeronautics, a branch of Techniques d’Avant Garde, which holds a stake in McLaren.

“It’s a brand I’ve been familiar with since Day 1 and it’s my passion,” Kerub said. “The fact that Carl (Hermez, team crew chief) came to me and said that IMSA is changing their GS approach for 2018 starting in 2017 and everything’s going to be homologated to GT4, we looked at the program and said it’s a perfect fit for us. It all started with McLaren.”

MIA currently fields two McLarens in GS, one of which is driven by a pair of Porsche GT3 Cup champions with Chris Green and Jesse Lazare. Kerub isn’t surprised by the McLaren’s strong showing in the Continental Tire Challenge so far, but admits there is a big change his drivers are experiencing.

“The GT4 homologation of these cars make it much more of a street car than a racecar,” Kerub said. “Every racecar in the world, while you’re throttling, you can still apply the brake in the corner to balance the car out. In these cars, you can’t. The minute you tap on the brakes it’s like a street car and it wants to stop. Then when it wants to stop, it wants to cut all the power to the right foot. It’s very street-safety oriented.”

But power is definitely something the McLaren doesn’t lack.

“It’s detuned to be able to fit in the class, so having a super series car to begin with and then working downwards gives slightly more of a benefit than what you’re capable of doing than to try and bring a car up to its maximum potential.”
Much like MIA, it was an easy decision for VOLT Racing to partner with McLaren for its first season in the Continental Tire Challenge.

“When I realized we had an opportunity to be an early adopter and literally get car number one off of McLaren’s line, that was an exciting proposition,” said Alan Brynjolfsson, VOLT Racing team owner and driver. “It’s been a great two-way street in terms of how McLaren has been supportive of us and I don’t think we would’ve gotten that personalized level from some of the other manufacturers.”

Along with McLaren’s support, there were many factors about the new car that appealed to Brynjolfsson, whose racing career began only 18 months ago but quick success in development series led him to make the jump into GS.

“The car is low and aerodynamic and should do great for high speed tracks like Daytona,” Brynjolfsson explained. “It’s low and wide, so it should have great cornering ability. It’s mid-engine, so it should be balanced and it’s been detuned, so it’s got the power. I’m confident in myself and my co-driver Chris Hall, so if we’ve got the car and we’ve got the drivers, we’ve got a shot.”

Technical aspects aside, Brynjolfsson circled back to one of the most fundamental points of racing when talking about his love for the new McLaren GT4.

“Why not drive a cool car, right? I mean, that’s why we’re doing it in the end is to have some fun and excitement. I love it, the fans love it. It’s a win-win.”

40-Car IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship Field Set For

Circuit of The Americas Next Week

Field Of 33 Planned For IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (April 26, 2017) – All four IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship classes – totaling 40 cars – have been entered for next week’s fourth round of the 12-race season, the Advance Auto Parts SportsCar Showdown at Circuit of The Americas on Saturday, May 6.

Live coverage of the race in the United States will be available via IMSA Radio along with in-car cameras on IMSA.com. The race will be televised at 7 p.m. ET on FS1 and will stream on FOX Sports GO with FS1 authentication.

The largest of the four WeatherTech Championship classes, GT Daytona (GTD), brings a strong field of 17 cars, including Texas-based Lone Star Racing, which makes its 2017 series debut in its home state event. Co-drivers Dan Knox and Mike Skeen will share the team’s No. 80 ACS Manufacturing Mercedes-AMG GT3 in the first of four planned WeatherTech Championship events this season.

“This schedule worked for us last year and we are looking forward to visiting four of our favorite tracks again in 2017,” Knox said. “We would love to do more races, who wouldn’t, but I also have many time commitments away from the race track with family and business. It has been six months since we last raced so we are anxious to get things going very soon at COTA.”

The team has chosen a race car with serious momentum in the GTD class, as Mercedes-AMG enters the race riding a two-race win streak. Texan Ben Keating – a three-time winner at COTA – and Jeroen Bleekemolen gave the three-pointed star its first WeatherTech Championship win at Sebring in their No. 33 Riley Motorsports-Team AMG machine and rate among the top GTD contenders at COTA as well.

Gunnar Jeannette and Cooper MacNeil made it two in a row for the manufacturer in their No. 50 WeatherTech Racing-Riley Motorsports Mercedes-AMG GT3 on April 8 at Long Beach. And a fourth Mercedes-AMG, the No. 75 SunEnergy1 Racing entry to be shared at COTA by Kenny Habul and Tristan Vautier, scored the manufacturer’s first GTD pole with Vautier at the wheel in Sebring.

Mercedes faces a stiff challenge from seven other manufacturers to keep its GTD winning streak alive, though. Lexus has a pair of entries, as does Acura and Lamborghini. There are four Porsche 911 GT3 Rs in the class field and single entries from BMW, Ferrari and Audi.

In the Prototype class, the fastest of the four classes in the WeatherTech Championship, the entry list includes the same 10 cars that competed at Long Beach, albeit with one driver lineup change. Marco Bonanomi joins incumbent co-driver Jose Gutierrez in the No. 52 PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports Ligier LM P2 car. Leading the class are brothers Ricky and Jordan Taylor, who won the first three races of the season in their No. 10 Konica Minolta Cadillac DPi-V.R and also won the 2016 WeatherTech Championship race at COTA.

Not unlike the Prototype class, GT Le Mans (GTLM) also features the same field of cars it had for the BUBBA burger Sports Car Grand Prix at Long Beach. However, there is one notable driver lineup change in GTLM as well, with Wolf Henzler moving into the No. 912 Porsche 911 RSR alongside Laurens Vanthoor for the Porsche GT Team. The Charlotte, North Carolina-based team scored a 1-2 sweep in GTLM at COTA last year with its previous generation RSR and a vastly different driver lineup.

After sitting out Long Beach, the Prototype Challenge (PC) class returns to action with a four-car field. Leading this class are James French and Pato O’Ward in the No. 38 Ric-Man Construction/Neurospine Institute/Cardio Access/AIG Technologies/Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children ORECA FLM09 for Performance Tech Motorsports. French, O’Ward and the Performance Tech team scored dominating victories in both the season-opening Rolex 24 At Daytona and March’s Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Fueled by Fresh From Florida.

While the WeatherTech Championship headlines the Advance Auto Parts SportsCar Showdown on Sat., May 6, the IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge takes center stage on the 3.4-mile COTA racetrack for a two-hour race on Fri., May 5.

The Continental Tire Challenge will feature a strong, 33-car entry list split nearly evenly among its two classes. The faster Grand Sport (GS) class has 16 entries, with 17 set to compete in the Street Tuner (ST) class.

Making its debut in IMSA the is the Camaro GT4.R, Chevrolet’s new GT4-spec racer. The car made its worldwide competition debut earlier this year, but the May 5 race will mark its first outing in the Continental Tire Challenge, fielded by 2015 GS champions Stevenson Motorsports.

The GS class features a pair of entries from Austin-based CJ Wilson Racing, the No. 33 Porsche of Fresno/Sonic Tools/Forgeline/Alpinestars Porsche Cayman GT4 for co-drivers Marc Miller and Till Bechtolsheimer and the No. 35 Techemet/Engie/Winward Cayman for Russell Ward and Damien Faulkner.

The ST class also features a team from deep in the heart of Texas, San Antonio-based Murillo Racing, which fields defending COTA ST winners Jeff Mosing – of Austin – and Dallas-resident Eric Foss in the No. 56 Mosing Motorcars Porsche Cayman. Houston’s Tim Probert shares the No. 65 Murillo Racing Porsche with Brent Mosing, from Lafayette, Louisiana.

The Advance Auto Parts SportsCar Showdown weekend includes two additional IMSA-sanctioned one-make series, the Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge USA by Yokohama and its 23-car field, as well as the Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America season-opening weekend. Lamborghini Super Trofeo also has a 23-car entry list.

On-track activity begins Thurs., May 4 with practice sessions for all four series. The schedule on Fri., May 6 features qualifying for each series – including WeatherTech Championship qualifying from 12:05-1:35 p.m. CT – the Circuit of The Americas 120 for the Continental Tire Challenge, a 50-minute Lamborghini Super Trofeo race and a 45-minute Porsche GT3 Cup race.

Saturday’s schedule calls for second Lamborghini Super Trofeo and Porsche GT3 Cup races and a WeatherTech Championship all-driver autograph session from 10:45-11:30 a.m. CT. The green flag flies on the two-hour, 40-minute WeatherTech Championship race at 1:35 p.m. CT.

Tickets for the Advance Auto Parts SportsCar Showdown are available now at www.thecircuit.com.

Contact:

Nate Siebens
Senior Manager, IMSA Communications

(386) 310-6568

nsiebens