Thompson Apologizes for “No Excuse” DragonSpeed Crash

Image: IMSA

Parker Thompson has apologized to DragonSpeed for his incident with the team’s Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R in the early stages of last weekend’s Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, stating there was “no excuse” on his end that ultimately left the GTD team with a heavily damaged car.

Thompson, in his second LMP2 race, made side-to-side contact with the No. 81 Corvette of Henrik Hedman while trying to overtake the car in the second hour of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship enduro, which put the FIA Bronze-rated driver into the barriers.

The former Porsche Carrera Cup North America champion was handed a five-minute stop-and-hold penalty for incident responsibility, which ultimately took the class pole-sitting No. 52 Bryan Herta Autosport with PR1/Mathiasen Oreca 07 Gibson out of contention.

Speaking with IMSA Radio’s Arjuna Kankipati during the race, Thompson took full responsibility for the incident.

“It’s totally my fault,” he said. “I saw Casper [Stevenson] and Giacomo [Altoe] and I’ve got to go over to the rest of the DragonSpeed guys and apologize but they were busy putting the car together to get it back on track.

“It was great to see them back on track.

“If there was one car you didn’t want to hit, it’s those guys. I saw what happened at Daytona. It’s not what you wanted.

“There’s no excuse. I used to be a GT guy; I saw the monstrosities that the LMP2 field has committed on the GT group.

“But I’m not making an excuse for the P2 guys. You just don’t realize how long of a wheelbase that car (LMP2) has.

“It caught me out today. I’d like to forget about it.”

Hedman escaped injury in the high-speed crash, which left an unpleasant taste within the Elton Julian-run team.

“Our race was effectively ruined early on by a shocking move on Henrik — there is no word for that – and there was nothing he could do,” said co-driver Giacomo Altoe. “The consequences could have been far worse.”

With the help of Pratt Miller Motorsports, DragonSpeed’s Corvette returned to the race after nearly three hours of undergoing repairs that included new bodywork, a driveshaft and a handful of other parts.

“The team’s efforts to get the car back out were amazing,” said Julian. “This is no surprise as I think everyone knows what our group is made of.

“Big thanks also to Corvette Racing and the Pratt Miller group for helping out.

“Everyone pulling together like that is really impressive, even in just our second race with Corvette.”

Altoe added: “When we returned to the race, our pace was strong even though we were clearly not in the best conditions.

“We have to take the positives from this pace and use it to build future success. Sebring is always a tough race, and we saw that again today. We’ll come back even stronger — we have everything we need to shine.”

Thompson, who is juggling a dual series program as BHA with PR1’s Endurance Cup driver in LMP2 and set to embark on a full season FIA World Endurance Championship LMGT3 program in a Team WRT BMW M4 GT3 EVO, said he will learn from Saturday’s costly incident.

“The more time you can get behind the wheel of anything, the more perspective you’re going to have, especially in multi-class racing.

“It’s funny the perspective you take away from it because there’s plenty of GTs that probably deserve to get hit today because they’re turning in on us, they’re doing bad stuff to us.

“P2s always take a bad rap but we don’t have ABS. When we chose to brake in a straight line and we fire it in there, we can’t move.

“It’s a game you have to play and everybody has to respect each other.

“On the DragonSpeed guys, it’s not fault of their own. It’s terrible to see. All I can do, it’s my second [LMP2] race, I can just be better and hopefully… as I grow up ad mature in P2, just remember that incident and never do it again.”

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