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Watkins Glen Saturday Notebook

John Dagys’ Saturday notebook from Watkins Glen International…

Photo: John Dagys

Photo: John Dagys

***The Ginetta-Nissan LMP3 car, which will take part in Monday’s test, arrived at Watkins Glen Saturday morning and is on display in IMSA’s business unit in the paddock. It will run on Continental tires for the first time, the same “Gold” construction currently used on the Prototype and Prototype Challenge cars.

***Continental Tire has brought roughly 3,700 tires to Watkins Glen this weekend to accommodate the nine-and-a-half hours of racing between the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship and Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge action.

***A total of 34 cars are set to take the green flag tomorrow, marking a 35 percent decrease in entries year-to-year. Fifty three cars took part in last year’s Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen, with notable absences including Tequila Patron ESM.

***Alex Popow has been added to the No. 8 Starworks Motorsport Oreca FLM09, joining Renger van der Zande and Mike Hedlund this weekend in the Detroit Prototype Challenge class-winning entry.

***Starworks team principal Peter Baron has credited their recent turnaround due to taking their engineering in-house, with Baron and van der Zande working together on setup. The team’s former engineer, Catherine Crawford, moved to the DeltaWing team after Sebring.

***Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge driver Liam Dwyer met CORE autosport‘s Jon Bennett for the first time this weekend. Dwyer‘s life was saved by tourniquets manufactured by Bennett’s Composite Resources company. 

***CORE autosport is hosting members from the Wounded Warrior Project this weekend as it’s done for the last four years.

***IMSA announced Saturday that it has become the presenting sponsor of HSR’s Classic 24 Hour at Daytona. The event, which debuted last year, is set to return on Nov. 12-15.

***The unapproved splitter which resulted in a 35-point GTD manufacturers penalty for Porsche following Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca has since been homologated and approved for competition.

***GRT Grasser Racing Team team principal Gottfried Grasser is here this weekend, experiencing his first IMSA event. Grasser is the entrant of Lamborghini’s factory Huracán GT3 program in the Blancpain Endurance Series. “I’m really impressed because the TUDOR Championship is a really nice series,” Grasser told Sportscar365.

***Grasser said he wouldn’t rule out seeing his team competing Stateside in the future, although their primary focus will be on supporting the Huracán GT3 customer program worldwide beginning next year.

***Leading scientists in a Continental Tire project have been awarded the prestigious Joseph von Fraunhofer Prize for their research on the Russian dandelion and the development of car tire prototypes based on dandelion rubber. Continental anticipates launching production tires made from dandelion rubber in the next five to ten years.

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

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