Pumpelly: “Karma Caught Up” for RS1 to Win Silver Title in Pits

Photo: Fred Hardy/SRO

Spencer Pumpelly believes “karma caught up” to RAFA Racing Team, which was unable to overthrow he and Luca Mars to win the Pirelli GT4 America Silver class championship due to a set of extreme circumstances in Sunday’s dramatic title-decider at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Pumpelly and Mars ended up winning the championship by a single point over the No. 68 RAFA Toyota duo of Westin Workman and Tyler Gonzalez, despite having been taken out of the race on the opening lap.

The co-drivers of the No. 028 Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 RS Clubsport entered the season finale with an 18-point lead and needed to finish sixth in class or higher, with Workman and Gonzalez needing in a must-win situation, which they accomplished.

With the starting grid jumbled due to the cancellation of second qualifying because of a timing and scoring failure on Friday, Mars started the race from the mid pack of the 34-car field but had contact with the No. 812 RAFA Toyota GR Supra GT4 EVO2 of Werner Neugebauer on the first lap, leading to a spin and terminal left-front wheel damage.

The incident, however, collected two other Silver class contenders, the No. 130 Advance Motorsports McLaren Artura GT4 of Parker DeLong and Bruno Colombo’s No. 98 Random Vandals Racing BMW M4 GT4 EVO, which both also retired from the race.

Neugebauer was handed incident responsibility and was forced to serve a drive-through penalty as a result.

However, two crucial factors played into Mars and Pumpelly winning the title from pit lane.

Both of the other cars’ pit boxes were behind the No. 28 RS1’s box on pit lane, which resulted in the duo finishing seventh in class.

However, they scored sixth place points due to the third place class-finishing No. 007 CSM Aston Martin Vantage GT4 Evo, a new entry for this weekend, was invisible on points.

“After we got taken out, I thought it was over,” Mars told Sportscar365. “Someone told us there was a chance that we didn’t really understand.

“I didn’t really know if it was true or not or what to believe.

“The more I heard it, the more people seemed to think we would win the championship.

“I’m just super happy. The team worked so hard all year. I know we didn’t end off how we wanted to but Spencer and the whole RS1 crew, they drove hard all year and gave it their best.

“I’m really glad we were able to take the title and win it.”

Pumpelly hailed the team effort from the Justin Bellinzoni-led squad, which helped he and Mars to go on a commanding seven-race class win streak, but suffered a run of bad luck and misfortune in the final two weekends of the season.

“It’s an amazing effort by everybody here,” he said. “It was an absolute privilege to be one of the drivers in that car this year.

“The team is amazing. Luca just blew my mind with how talented and composed he was all season.

“Justin, the guys he puts together, everybody was just amazing.

“I think karma is real. I feel like Westin and Tyler did a fantastic job and they raced us hard and clean all year.

“But the team may have had a second agenda. But karma caught up because when they took us out, they took out the two other cars they needed to beat us in the end.

“This isn’t the way we wanted to win it. We wanted to come across the stripe with the team on the wall celebrating.

“It’s a little sour but at the same time, I’m just really, really proud of all these guys.”

Dylan Spaulding contributed to this report

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