Gidley Wins Rain-Soaked Saturday Race at Road America

Photo: Brian Cleary/SRO

Memo Gidley claimed victory in a rain-soaked opening GT America powered by AWS race of the weekend at Road America, which ended under caution following a massive accident for SRO3 class points leader Justin Rothberg.

Rothberg, who was running second at the time, lost control of his No. 29 Turner Motorsport BMW M4 GT3 EVO at the Kink, making heavy front-end contact with the wall with seven minutes to go.

Rothberg, who climbed out of the car under his own power, reported that he hit a puddle.

It resulted in the race’s second full-course caution after only seeing less than four laps of green flag running.

The 40-minute race started behind the safety car for two laps, which saw a spin and contact in the wall for Jason Bell, prior to a one-lap green flag stint until Bell crashed out after heavy contact with the Turn 13 barriers in his No. 2 Racers Edge Motorsports Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo.

Bell’s race-ending accident resulted in barrier repairs and set up an initial restart with nine minutes to go until Rothberg’s crash.

Gidley, in the No. 56 SKI Autosports Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II, picked up his second win of the season, with the No. 50 Chouest Povoledo Racing Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R of Ross Chouest finishing second.

The No. 32 GMG Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R of Kyle Washington, who spun in Turn 5 following the race’s second restart, recovered to finish third, ahead of GT3 debutant Farhan Siddiqi in the No. 20 FASTMD Racing with Remstar Audi in fourth.

Both Rothberg and Bell, the only other runners in the six-car starting field, were retirements.

Race 2 is scheduled to get underway Sunday at 9:15 a.m. CST with live coverage on SRO’s GT World YouTube channel and on Twitch.

RESULTS: Race 1

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