Park Place Retains Bergmeister, McMurry, Lindsey for 2017

Photo: Park Place Motorsports

Park Place Motorsports will return to the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship in the GT Daytona class next season, with its No. 73 Porsche 911 GT3 R.

The Dallas-based team announced that Porsche factory driver Joerg Bergmeister, Matt McMurry and team principal Patrick Lindsey would continue in an unchanged lineup in 2017.

Bergmeister and Lindsey will compete for the full season, while McMurry will join the team for the four Tequila Patron North American Endurance Cup races at Daytona, Sebring, Watkins Glen and Road Atlanta.

In 2016, the team score two second-place finishes in the highly competitive GTD category, and five top-ten finishes as well.

“Joerg is great to have because of his out and out pace and experience,” said Lindsey. “Just having that competitive force inside of the team is a glue that binds everyone tighter together.

“He’s actually a younger brother so you wouldn’t expect this but he has the heart of an older brother or a father to build up a budding talent like Matt.

“He’s there to extract Matt’s full potential and it’s amazing to see what he accomplishes when that happens. Look at Matt’s Petit qualifying from last year, I expect to see more of that from him.

“Of course having the same drivers in the car allow you to continue where you left off and build rather than begin again. That will hopefully be somewhat of an advantage as the GTD class has a few new entrants this year.

“I believed we could accomplish a lot last year, and we didn’t necessarily hit the marks we wanted. But I’ll set my hopes equally as high, if not higher, this year because I know we have a crew and lineup that is set to achieve.”

Jake Kilshaw

Jake Kilshaw is a UK-based journalist. He is a graduate of Politics and International Relations.