Road America Post-Race Notebook

Photo: Jake Galstad/IMSA

***Porsche Penske Motorsport consolidated its lead in the GTP class on Sunday with its fourth IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship victory of the season. While the No. 7 crew of Felipe Nasr and Dane Cameron, who finished second, lost some ground to teammates Mathieu Jaminet and Nick Tandy, who claimed the win an energy race, their nearest competitor, the No. 01 Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac V-Series.R, now sits 185 points behind in the title battle with two races to go.

***The 1-2 result, Penske’s first since Indianapolis last year, came due to “top-notch strategy” according to Porsche LMDh factory director Urs Kuratle. Porsche Penske managing director Jonathan Diuguid added: “I couldn’t have imagined such a result in my wildest dreams… This race is a prime example of great teamwork. Everyone gave their all for the overall project.”

***Cameron, who had an off-course excursion in qualifying, admitted post-race that the result was “more than we had hoped for.” Nasr revealed that the No. 7 Porsche made an extra stop to change the car’s rear deck after contact with another competitor.

***The Brazilian said: “At one point, I thought it was all over. After being hit from behind by a competitor, we had to make an extra stop. After that, we just aimed to maximize our points haul. We achieved that optimally.”

***The race-winning No. 6 Porsche, meanwhile, overcame an early race drive-through penalty after Tandy spun around the No. 31 Action Express Racing Cadillac of Pipo Derani.

***Porsche has extended its lead over Cadillac to 89 points in the GTP manufacturer’s championship.

***Jaminet and Tandy dedicated the win to their engineer Zach Lagrone, who is currently in the hospital “fighting for his life.” Several team members were seen wearing a zebra t-shirt in victory lane, along with a zebra plush toy, owning to Lagrone’s nickname.

***Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti’s two Acura ARX-06s, which locked out the front row, combined to lead 44 of the race’s 62 laps, although came up short, with the No. 10 Acura of Ricky Taylor forced to make a late-race stop for fuel while under the final yellow with 28 minutes to go.

***Team principal Wayne Taylor said: “We really had dominated the whole weekend, but we didn’t dominate when it really counted which was at the end of the race. Ricky’s run at the end of the race, from ninth to third was exceptional, but lots of questions we have to ask ourselves about today’s race.”

***The No. 40 WTRAndretti Acura, which finished eighth, served drive-through penalties for Louis Deletraz’s incident responsibility after contact with the No. 85 JDC-Miller Motorsports Porsche 963 of Richard Westbrook, as well as an infraction for working outside of the pit box.

***Sebastien Bourdais and Renger van der Zande had a challenging race, with the No. 01 CGR Cadillac getting collected in multiple incidents, including Bourdais getting “washed out” behind an out-of-control No. 25 Team RLL BMW M Hybrid V8 of Nick Yelloly, that led to both GTP cars crashing. The Frenchman continued but later had two more spins as a result of contact.

***Yelloly’s race-ending accident in the second hour came after co-driver Connor De Phillippi spun the car on the pace lap.

***United Autosports claimed its long-awaited first WeatherTech Championship class victory, which came in Ben Keating and Ben Hanley’s first LMP2 podium finish of the year.

***Inter Europol by PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports’ Tom Dillmann and Nick Boulle continue to lead the class standings, now 27 points ahead of the Riley pairing of Felipe Fraga and Gar Robinson, which finished tenth in class on Sunday after multiple bodywork changes, including one after Fraga had contact with Dillmann on pit lane, as well as an off-course excursion by the Brazilian with 48 minutes to go.

***The GTD Pro class win for Conquest Racing came nearly exactly 12 years after its last in top-series IMSA competition when the Eric Bachelart-led team claimed LMP2 class honors in a Morgan LMP2 Nissan with Bertrand Baguette and David Heinemeier Hansson, also at Road America.

***The third-place class-finishing No. 23 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo of Ross Gunn and Alex Riberas was unable to refuel during their final stop after being hit by another competitor on pit lane, resulting in a fuel-saving run for Gunn to the finish.

***Gunn said: “We had a bit of a hectic pit stop when I went to get into the car, but we achieved our goal on strategy. We got very fortunate with the amount of yellows at the end because it was very, very tight on fuel.”

***AO Racing’s Laurin Heinrich now has a reduced 76-point lead over Gunn in the GTD Pro standings heading into the final sprint race of the year later this month at Virginia International Raceway.

***Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports salvaged a top-five class finish for the No. 3 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R of Antonio Garcia and Alexander Sims, who was spun by the No. 64 Multimatic Motorsports Ford Mustang GT3 of Mike Rockenfeller into the Turn 5 gravel trap on the opening lap.

***Rockenfeller’s Mustang GT3 went behind the wall with a broken right-front lower control arm and also received a drive-through penalty for incident responsibility.

***Sims said: “Rocky came and apologized. I know that there was nothing malicious in it. It was just a mistake, and we all make mistakes. That’s the way it goes. I have to give great credit to the Corvette, which held up pretty well for a decent hit. We had a little movement in the rear toe, and we could finish the race with it.”

***The No. 65 Mustang GT3 of Joey Hand and Dirk Mueller, meanwhile, lost the majority of its rear bodywork after contact with the No. 27 Heart of Racing Aston of Roman De Angelis in the final hour, which brought out the race’s fourth of five full-course cautions.

***Vasser Sullivan’s No. 14 Lexus RC F GT3 finished ninth in class after being hit with two penalties, including a pit infraction in the second hour when Ben Barnicoat attempted to leave the pit lane with the fuel hose still attached, as well as a jumped restart.

***Turner Motorsport’s GTD class victory on Sunday means that 16 of IMSA’s 18 manufacturers have now visited victory lane this season. Only Honda and Toyota have not won at least one race in an IMSA-sanctioned competition this year.

***Turner’s Robby Foley and Patrick Gallagher have closed to within 268 points of the Winward Racing duo of Philip Ellis and Russell Ward, who finished fourth in class on Sunday.

***Gradient Racing scored its first podium finish of the season with its No. 66 Acura NSX GT3 Evo22 of Stevan McAleer and Sheena Monk finishing third in class. Runners-up, Inception Racing, meanwhile, notched its second consecutive podium after Brendan Iribe and Frederik Schandorff’s third place result at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.

***IMSA declared a new sports car attendance record for Road America, with some suggesting the crowd potentially surpassed numbers from the recent NTT IndyCar Series round at the Wisconsin circuit. Road America did not release an official attendance figure.

***Cameron said: “It’s great to see the strength of the series at the moment, to see it be bigger and bigger every year. We had some great news from [IMSA President John] Doonan this morning about the increase in our crowds and rivaling the IndyCar attendance, which is huge and special for us, especially for us being a niche motorsport in America.”

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