Cameron, Curran Score First Win Together in Detroit

An Action Express Racing Corvette DP has won Saturday’s Chevrolet Sports Car Classic, but not the polesitting and defending TUDOR United SportsCar Championship title-winning No. 5 car driven by Christian Fittipaldi and Joao Barbosa.

Instead, their teammates, Dane Cameron and Eric Curran in the No. 31 Whelen Engineering-backed car, have secured their first win together as teammates in Saturday’s 100-minute race.

Cameron made a pass of Jordan Taylor with 28 minutes remaining, then held off a late charge from Barbosa in the No. 5 Mustang Sampling-backed car to secure the win.

Barbosa was likely to come home in second, but spun at Turn 3 on the final lap, which promoted the No. 60 Michael Shank Racing Ligier JS P2 Honda of Ozz Negri and John Pew to a surprise second place finish.

The No. 5 car made it home in third despite the last lap spin.

Neither the No. 01 Chip Ganassi Racing Riley-Ford nor No. 90 VisitFlorida.com Racing Corvette DP threatened for the win, and both had an incident during the race.

Joey Hand in the No. 01 car contacted Ozz Negri in the No. 60 car entering Turn 5, while the No. 90 car of Richard Westbrook had a spin exiting Turn 3.

Meanwhile Jordan Taylor incurred a drive-through penalty in the No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing Corvette DP after contact with GT Daytona class driver Townsend Bell, in the No. 63 Scuderia Corsa Ferrari 458 Italia.

The Starworks Motorsport Oreca FLM09 of Renger van der Zande and Mirco Schultis won in Prototype Challenge after a battle of survival.

Van der Zande made a pass on James Vance in the polesitting No. 38 Performance Tech Motorsports Oreca FLM09 after a restart and was able to streak away from there.

The No. 85 JDC/Miller Motorsports Oreca FLM09 of Stephen Simpson and Mikhail Goikhberg was second with the No. 38 car of Vance and pole-sitter James French in third.

After a first lap pit stop to fix the left front suspension and nose assembly, CORE autosport ended a trying weekend in fourth place.

Contact, meanwhile, between the No. 11 RSR Racing Oreca FLM09 and No. 52 PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports in Turn 1 took them both out of the race. Bruno Junqueira spun and was hit by an oncoming Tom Kimber-Smith.

RESULTS: Chevrolet Sports Car Classic