An interesting late strategy call from the strongest car in the field left rivals in prime position to play it conservative and snatch victory away from those with outright pace in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race at Road America.
Filipe Albuquerque, Ricky Taylor and the No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura ARX-06 had the pace to take victory in the IMSA SportsCar weekend, but a stop for fuel and scrubbed tires during the final yellow, when all the other cars had energy to make it to the end, left them in third place.
Instead, it was a Porsche Penske Motorsport one-two when the team had been looking like also-rans all weekend, Mathieu Jaminet and Nick Tandy taking victory in the No. 6 963 over the championship-leading No. 7 squad of Felipe Nasr and Dane Cameron. As a result, PPM is now also one-two in the points, Jaminet and Tandy having displaced Cadillac Racing’s Sebastien Bourdais and Renger van der Zande from second.
โYesterday, it was clear we were the slowest of the four manufacturers and we were starting at the back of the grid,โ said Tandy. โNow we sit here, first and second. It’s just a massive testament to not giving up. It’s a massive testament to everything that Porsche Penske has put in, from the car development side and also especially through trackside on the team aspects.โ
Albuquerque claimed pole for the No. 10 Acura Saturday, with WTRAndretti sweeping the front row. But issues for the No. 40 Acura of Jordan Taylor and Louis Deletraz, starting with a drive-through penalty for contact with the No. 85 JDC-Miller MotorSports Porsche 963 of Richard Westbrook, put them out of contention.
The No. 10, though, was going strong. Ricky Taylor had set a fast lap 1.5s quicker than anybody else in the field, but a string of yellows in the second half of the race left everyone able to go long โ the No. 6 Porsche had its last fuel stop 1.5h before the end of the race. But while Jaminet had been saving fuel, WTRAndretti didn’t think they had enough energy to make it to the finish, and Jaminet wasn’t surprised to see the Acura head to pit lane.
โI think they pitted the same lap we did,โ he explained. โBut for sure I knew he had less energy. This was clear because he wasn’t saving on any of the yellows, he wasn’t saving any of the green laps before when he kind of took off. I already knew on the yellow that I’m tight, most likely I’m not going to make it, but I also knew there is no chance he’s going to make it. What they did was very efficient — they took the lead, but on the other hand, in a case like this, then you’re always behind on fuel, energy. So if you know you need to pit again, then you do. They took the aggressive way of doing it and I think we were more on the cautious way, and today paid off.โ
Taylor, who clearly had pace, faced the final restart in ninth place, but with plenty of energy, fresher scrubbed tires, and the greater pace that combination delivered. He was up to fifth almost immediately, then took fourth from Sebastien Bourdais in short order. Jack Aitken in the No. 31 Whelen Cadillac Racing V-Series.R took a little longer. Taylor was able to attack Nasr for second on the final lap, and the two had light contact, but Taylor could never take the position and ended up third.
Aitken and Pipo Derani ended up fourth. The No. 5 Proton Competition Porsche 963 looked like it had the pace to contend, and had been the quickest of the four Porsches most of the weekend. Gianmaria Bruni and Bent Viscaal both had a taste of the lead, but a miscue by Viscaal on a restart sent the Porsche tumbling down the order and the duo ended up fifth.
On a day when the No. 01 Cadillac squad hoped to gain some points on the championship leaders, the plan went south quickly. The No. 25 BMW M Team RLL M Hybrid V8 was having a decent run when Nick Yelloly slid off track in the Carousel and made contact with the wall, but it was the cloud of dust that Yelloly sent up that started things going off for the No. 01. Bourdais got lost in the dust and went off, spinning back across track and making contact with the barrier on drivers’ right, necessitating a nose change as well as a drive-through penalty for entering a closed pit for emergency service. Still, it looked like the team might salvage a decent finish until a couple of incidents in the final laps sent Bourdais back to ninth, the last of the GTPs still running.
Nasr and Cameron lead the GTP points with 2386, 100 points ahead of Jaminet and Tandy. Bourdais and van der Zande are another 85 points back.
Comeback stories don’t get much better than that of Ben Keating and Ben Hanley winning LMP2 in the No. 2 United Autosports ORECA, the first win for United in IMSA competition. Keating crashed the car heavily in the second practice session on Saturday morning. The United Autosports crew repaired the car before qualifying, and Keating qualified the car in second behind PJ Hyett’s No. 99 AO Racing ORECA.
โI can’t say enough about the team effort. It’s really nice to to have the win,โ Keating said. “It’s nice anytime you can win one of these races because they’re so competitive, but it feels like I’m paying back a little bit of all the hard work that the team put in. It was just amazing for them to basically completely rebuild the car, replace the transmission, do all of that after free practice two, and get it ready before qualifying. not just to get the car ready, but the car felt really, really good when I got into qualifying. I had no problem going out there and pushing again after having a big incident. The car felt equally good going into the race. I was able to take the lead into Turn 1, and we just had a great car.โ
United rocketed off to a great start, but that was only the beginning of the battle they faced just one day after the crew thrashed through an emergency rebuild. Michael Levitt/Lumen
Keating took the lead at the start, but it was the right strategy and a stroke of luck that delivered the win. Hanley, scheduled to pit 40m from the end of the race, a time that would ensure the car made it to the finish under green-flag running, brought the car in just before a full-course caution was called for a GTD car parked on the side of the track after contact. With most of the rest of the competition having to pit under the yellow, it gave the No. 2 the lead.
Hanley had to fend off Scott Andrews in the No. 79 JDC-Miller MotorSports ORECA he shared with Gerry Kraut, which was on the same strategy, but Hanley was putting in quick laps that left him with a 6.6s margin at the end.
โThere were so many yellow flags or safety cars right there at the end, it was a decision of whether or not we stay out and keep track position, or come in and take fuel,โ Keating explained. โWith a yellow flag, I think with somewhere around an hour left to go, we decided to come in and give up the track position so that we would be, hopefully, 4s quicker on refueling in the last pit stop, compared to the AO car and the No. 88 car. Everybody came in except those two cars; we came out in third, but we knew if we stayed close to them, we had a 4s refueling advantage. The decision was: we know we can go 40m on fuel, as soon as we have 40m left, we need to pit so that we can take advantage of that 4s. We just got really, really lucky that the yellow flag came out at that particular time.โ
Andrews and Kraut finished second, with Hyett and Paul-Loup Chatin completing the podium. Stuart Wiltshire and Paul Dalziel finished fourth in the No. 18 Era Motorsports ORECA, while Nicklas Nielsen and Luis Perez Companc in the No. 88 AF Corse entry were fifth.
It was a tough day for the points leaders, with Riley Motorsports’ Gar Robinson and Felipe Fraga finishing10th, and Nick Boulle and Tom Dillmann seventh for Inter Europol by PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports.
Boulle and Dillman took over the LMP2 points lead with 1564 points, 27 ahead of Robinson and Fraga. Dalziel, along with Hanley and Keating, closed the gap, 91 and 97 points behind, respectively.
RESULTS
