Koch, Boehm Win Weather-Impacted Saturday Race at VIR

Photo: Fred Hardy/SRO

Kenton Koch claimed overall victory in a weather-impacted first Pirelli GT4 America race of the weekend at Virginia International Raceway that saw less than ten minutes of green flag running.

Koch passed the pole-sitting No. 37 Dome Motorsport Mercedes-AMG GT4 of Marc Miller on the first lap of the race’s resumption from racing after a lengthy red flag with five minutes to go and bridged out to a 1.440-second win in his No. 97 Random Vandals Racing BMW M4 GT4 EVO.

Kevin Boehm started the 60-minute scheduled race in the race-winning BMW.

Miller survived a 1.28-second post-race time penalty for too short of a pit stop to finish second overall and in the Silver class, ahead of the No. 68 RAFA Racing Team Toyota GR Supra GT4 EVO2 of Tyler Gonzalez in third.

Random Vandals’ Josh Green and Sam Craven claimed Pro-Am class honors in the No. 94 BMW, while Charlie Postins and James Clay, of BimmerWorld, gave the German manufacturer a sweep of all three classes in the frantic wet-weather sprint to the finish.

Pole-sitter Nate Cicero in the No. 37 Dome Mercedes-AMG led the 27-car starting field to the green flag in increasingly wet conditions, although race control called a full-course caution at the completion of the first lap.

It was later turned into a red flag for lightning within the radius of VIR, which immediately halted all track action on safety grounds.

The race restarted with less than 20 minutes to go behind the safety car, which saw the majority of the cars pit for their mandatory driver change.

Only the No. 71 Marco Polo Motorsports Toyota of Nicolai Elghanayan elected to stay out, which saw three safety car laps before the restart under green flag conditions with 6 minutes and 33 seconds to go.

Elghanayan pitted after the first green flag lap for the mandatory driver change, and ended up finishing last.

Race 2 is scheduled for a 11:25 a.m. EST start time on Sunday 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