Photo: Jamey Price/WTRAndretti
Ricky Taylor said it was a “huge sense of relief” for he and Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti co-driver Filipe Albuquerque to break a 22-month winless streak while on the streets of downtown Detroit.
Taylor and Albuquerque claimed their long-awaited first win of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GTP era in Saturday’s Chevrolet Detroit Sports Car Classic, with Taylor getting around the No. 6 Penske Porsche 963 of Mathieu Jaminet for the victory.
While the sister car of Jordan Taylor, Louis Deletraz and Colton Herta picked up the win in March’s Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, the No. 10 crew had been winless since Road America 2022.
“Filipe and I have been together… This is our fourth year, and we’ve had a lot of success together and the 10 car was on a roll in our first three years together,” Taylor said.
“We’ve had a really rough last year-and-a-half, really struggling, haven’t had a win in a long, long time.
“It seemed like nothing could go our way.
“Everyone at HRC, Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti, worked really hard to put us back in the game.”
Taylor added: “It’s a huge sense of relief. Every weekend we keep saying we just need to put it together and it’s little details at this level that separates wins from being off the podium.
“One thing we could say is that we’ve always done our best. We’ve never given up. The motivation kept increasing.
“It doesn’t go down when you stop winning. It keeps going up. We wanted to win more than ever coming into here and I think everybody was working hard.
“For example, the way we lost Long Beach was part of the reason why we won here.
“We lost Long Beach because we had a poor driver change. I got in, my HANS was all twisted, and we worked on our driver change and actually did some custom stuff with the suit and HANS. The guys nailed the pit stop with the driver change.
“All of the details went well. Filipe had an amazing start. Without any little detail of that happening the way it did, we wouldn’t have won the race.
“The tiny decisions on the systems, the setup throughout the weekend, understanding all of our practice without IndyCar rubber, and how it evolved, I could name 100 things to the way the car was and what led us [to the win].
Albuquerque, meanwhile, compared the emotions of Saturday’s win to claiming victories in some of the biggest sports car races in the world.
“It was hard,” he said. “Today I nearly cried. It’s just a race but it felt like almost winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans or Daytona because it’s so special.
“We’ve been suffering so much. I wouldn’t say it’s unfair. We would have deserved some wins but things haven’t gone our way.
“Today, it came to our side. I’m just super happy it’s out of the way and now it’s the relief of going forward.”
Taylor admitted that he “couldn’t believe” to have been in the position for victory on the series of final restarts.
“The Porsche was very strong on short runs on restarts so the longer it went, we could kind of claw our way back,” he said.
“The Acura guys and the whole team has made a really strong car in the braking. That’s where we were able to do it.
“I think had it not been for that one GT car, if we had all those restarts after the way the race went, that was probably my last shot to get him.
“I’m really relieved that we took advantage of it, because it was still quite a long ways to go. You would have thought there would have been more opportunities but with how good they were on restarts, I don’t think I would have had another chance.
“I’m really happy for the team and our engineer, Logan. This is his first full season as a lead engineer. I’m happy for him to get his first win with us.
“There’s just so many people on the 10 car that have come around since we’ve expanded and haven’t had any success. I’m happy for our group on our Konica Minolta side.”
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