WTR Wins Weather-Impacted 6H Watkins Glen

Photo: Mike Levitt/IMSA

A late-race red flag and restart helped propel Wayne Taylor Racing to victory in Sunday’s Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen, in an Acura 1-2 finish.

Filipe Albuquerque passed the No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing Acura ARX-05 of Tom Blomqvist on the restart with 21 minutes to go and held off the Englishman following a frantic shootout in the DPi class.

While having started from pole, Blomqvist lost the lead to the No. 10 WTR Acura of Albuquerque on the opening lap, although the positions swapped back following the first round of pit stops.

The No. 10 WTR Acura ended up on an alternate strategy that saw Albuquerque and co-driver Ricky Taylor briefly take the lead through pit sequences until a red flag for lightning in the area with 90 minutes to go that had the No. 60 MSR entry of Blomqvist.

It resulted in an hour-long red flag, with ten minutes added to the clock prior to the restart.

Albuquerque crossed the line 0.861 seconds ahead of Blomqvist, who shared the No. 60 MSR Acura with Oliver Jarvis.

Sebastien Bourdais and Renger van der Zande completed the podium in the No. 01 Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R, ahead of the sister No. 02 entry driven by Alex Lynn and Earl Bamber in fourth.

The No. 31 Action Express Racing Cadillac of Pipo Derani, Olivier Pla and Mike Conway completed the top-five after coming back from stop-and-hold penalty for for working on the car while in a closed pit in the second hour.

The penalty nearly put the Whelen Engineering-sponsored car a lap down, with Derani benefitting from the race’s fifth full-course caution to catch back up. The Brazilian got back in the car during the final restart. 

Its sister, Ally-backed Cadillac of Jimmie Johnson, Mike Rockenfeller and Kamui Kobayashi was sixth, ahead of the delayed No. 5 JDC-Miller Motorsports Cadillac, which suffered right-rear bodywork damage after Richard Westbrook and a LMP3 car made contact in the fourth hour.

PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports claimed LMP2 class honors following a late-race pit stop and penalty for the No. 81 DragonSpeed entry.

Silver-rated driver Scott Huffaker took the No. 52 Oreca 07 Gibson across the line just 0.107 seconds ahead of the No. 8 Tower Motorsport entry of Louis Deletraz following a comeback drive for the Bobby Oergel-led squad.

Huffaker shared top class honors with Mikkel Jensen and Ben Keating, who was forced to serve an early race drive-through penalty for passing under the caution.

The LMP3 class win went to the No. 74 Riley Motorsports Ligier JS P320 Nissan of Felipe Fraga, Gar Robinson and Kay van Berlo, despite a late-race stop by the Brazilian.

The trio finished one lap ahead of the competition in a class that saw a high level of incidents and attrition.

It included a heavy accident for the No. 13 AWA Duqueine D08 Nissan of Lars Kern, who slammed into the wall at the Esses in the third hour. The German climbed from the car under his own power.

READ: BMW Team RLL, Winward Lose Class Wins in Drive-Time Infractions

The Heart of Racing swept both the GTD Pro and GTD classes after post-race infractions for both the No. 25 BMW M Team RLL and No. 57 Winward Racing entries.

Ian James, Roman De Angelis and Maxime Martin became the first drivers to win outright in a GTD entry amongst the production-based ranks in their No. 27 Aston Martin Vantage GT3.

Teammates Alex Riberas and Ross Gunn, meanwhile, picked up the class win in GTD Pro.

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John