Detroit Post-Race Notebook

Photo: Phil Abbott/IMSA

***Dane Cameron and Juan Pablo Montoya broke GM’s seven-year overall win streak in IMSA races at Belle Isle, giving Acura overall victory in Saturday’s Chevrolet Sports Car Classic. The streak dated back to the 2012 Grand-Am race, won by GAINSCO/Bob Stallings Racing’s Chevrolet-powered Riley DP.

***Ironically, the last non-GM win overall prior to Saturday was an Acura, in the Andretti Green Racing Acura ARX-01b LMP2 entry of James Rossiter and Frank Montgany. Races were not held at the venue between 2009-11.

***It also marked Acura Team Penske’s first win at a track other than Mid-Ohio, following its first two IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship victories in 2018 and 2019.

***Cameron and Montoya have moved to second in the DPi points standings, five points behind the Whelen Engineering Racing duo of Felipe Nasr and Pipo Derani, who finished second on Saturday. Click Here for the provisional points standings. 

***More than 45 minutes of the 100-minute race was run under yellow, thanks to five full-course cautions, mostly for accidents.

***Cooper MacNeil was the first retirement in the No. 63 Scuderia Corsa Ferrari 488 GT3 after contact with the Ryan Hardwick’s No. 48 Paul Miller Racing Lamborghini Huracan GT3 in Turn 1 at the start. MacNeil was handed a drive-through penalty for the incident, although was unable to serve it.

***While going one lap down from the incident, the Paul Miller Lamborghini rebounded to finish fifth in the hands of Bryan Sellers, benefitting from late-race carnage from several other GT Daytona competitors, including a clash between Katherine Legge and Bill Auberlen.

***Legge was unable to make it three wins in a row for herself and Meyer Shank Racing in Detroit.

***Auberlen, meanwhile, retired with less than five minutes to go with gearbox failure to his No. 96 Turner Motorsport BMW M6 GT3, which had initially claimed GTD pole until a camber-related infraction found in post-qualifying tech.

***AIM Vasser Sullivan remains undefeated in WeatherTech Sprint Cup competition, with Jack Hawksworth and Richard Heistand now holding a ten-point lead over Patrick Long, of Park Place Motorsports in the new-for-2019 cup. Click Here for the provisional points standings.

***The Meyer Shank Racing pairing of Trent Hindman and Mario Farnbacher maintain their lead in the WeatherTech Championship GTD standings, despite having failed to finish Saturday’s race, as full-season points were not rewarded this weekend.

***Farnbacher crashed out shortly after the first round of pit stops, with the MSR Acura having sustained heavy left-rear damage. “It all happened so quick and I just remember that I was trying to get around the McLaren and then mid corner the car snapped really hard which was not typical for the car,” Farnbacher said.

***GTD race winner Heistand admitted in the post-race press conference that he missed seeing co-driver Hawksworth’s pass for the lead as he “went to watch the race in a corner” after his opening stint.

***Zach Robichon’s GT Daytona class pole on Friday has gone down in the IMSA record books as a WeatherTech Sprint Cup pole, and not coming in the WeatherTech Championship. The Detroit round was the only standalone Sprint Cup race of the season.

***JDC-Miller Motorsports’ Misha Goikhberg won Saturday’s opening Trans-Am by Pirelli race of the weekend. The Russian took his BC Racing Chevrolet Camaro TA2 car to the win in the 60-minute race. Goikhberg FINISHED 4th in Sunday’s Race 2, which ran to an extended 80 minutes.

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