Wright’s Snow, Heylen Control Saturday Sebring Race

Photo: Wright Motorsports

Wright Motorsports’ Madison Snow and Jan Heylen combined to claim the No. 45 Porsche 911 GT3 R’s first overall victory of the Fanatec GT World Challenge America powered by AWS season in Race 1 at Sebring International Raceway.

Snow converted pole into a controlling opening stint in the Pro class Porsche over Chandler Hull’s No. 94 BimmerWorld BMW M4 GT3.

The mid-race pit stop and driver changes saw Heylen emerge ahead of Bill Auberlen, with the Florida-based Belgian crossing the line 6.512 seconds ahead of Auberlen to take top overall and Pro class honors.

MDK Motorsports’ Trenton Estep and Seth Lucas completed the podium in third after late-race contact between Stevan McAleer and Mario Farnbacher that resulted in Farnbacher getting spun around with less than three minutes to go.

A post-race time penalty equivalent to a drive-through given to McAleer handed Farnbacher’s Racers Edge Motorsports Acura NSX GT3 Evo22 a fourth place class finish.

It came after the No. 21 Conquest Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 of Alessandro Balzan stopped on track on the final lap while running in fifth.

Wright celebrated a double win on Saturday, with Adam Adelson and Elliott Skeer claiming top class honors in Pro-Am.

It came after a slow pit stop for the then class-leading No. 04 CrowdStrike by Riley Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo of George Kurtz and Colin Braun, who finished third in class.

Braun came under attack by the No. 38 ST Racing BMW of Neil Verhagen, whose co-driver Samantha Tan had to start from the rear of the 14-car field and then served a drive-through penalty for changing lanes at the race start.

Verhagen made his move around Braun for second in class with less than two laps to go, demoting Braun and Kurtz to the third step of the class podium.

The second and final Fanatec GT race of the weekend is set for Sunday at 1:45 p.m. EDT with live coverage on SRO’s GT World YouTube page.

RESULTS: Race 1

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