Blomqvist Leads Incident-Filled Opening Hour at The Glen

Pole-sitter Tom Blomqvist leads the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen after an incident-filled opening hour of action. He narrowly overtook Filipe Albuquerque’s No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing Acura ARX-05 on pit exist during the opening round of pit stops. 

Blomqvist led the field to green in his No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing Acura DPi, but was passed on the opening lap by Albuquerque. 

With both Acuras out front, Sebastian Bourdais in the No. 01 Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R. passed the sister No. 02 car of Earl Bamber to claim third overall in the opening laps.

The battle continued after a brief safety car, as Bamber and Bourdais swapped places again. 

Running has been interrupted twice by yellow flags. The first was brought out as the No. 74 Riley Motorsports and No. 7 Forty 7 LMP3 cars both independently spun into Turn 1, with the No. 7 narrowly avoiding a passing Blomqvist.

The second yellow was shown just prior to the end of the first hour amidst Henrik Hedman losing his left front wheel in the No. 81 DragonSpeed Oreca 07 Gibson.

There was also a Turn 1 collision between the No. 33 Sean Creech Motorsports LMP3 and the No. 36 Andretti Autosport entry. 

Steven Thomas aboard the No. 11 PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports Oreca, who qualified just one-thousandth of a second slower than Ben Keating’s sister No. 52 car, took an early lead, after Keating made an early stop for a splash of fuel, and began to open up a gap and he settled into his opening stint.

However, Thomas ran the red light on pit exit while racing Keating back to the track behind the safety car. Keating, who obeyed the light, subsequently took the class lead.

In GTD Pro, Ross Gunn tried an early move for the lead on Connor De Phillippi’s Team RLL BMW M4 GT3 into the Bus Stop, but was unsuccessful. Gunn, the only car yet to pit in the field, leads the class.   

Meanwhile, Michael Dinan leads the GTD field in the No. 96 Turner Motorsport BMW.