Baptista Sweeps Weekend; Hargrove Wins GT Sprint Title

Photo: PWC

Rodrigo Baptista has completed a clean sweep of the Pirelli World Challenge GT weekend at Watkins Glen, with Scott Hargrove picking up the Sprint title in Sunday’s season-ending round.

Baptista took his No. 3 K-PAX Racing Bentley Continental GT3 to a 12.507-second win over the No. 96 Pfaff Motorsports Porsche of Hargrove, in another commanding run for the Brazilian.

The overall win for Baptista, his third career in PWC competition, helped propel K-PAX to the GT Sprint teams’ championship, with Ferrari unofficially collecting the season-long manufacturers title.

Hargrove held off a hard-charging Alvaro Parente for second following a heated duel in the closing stages of the 50-minute race.

The No. 61 R. Ferri Motorsport Ferrari 488 GT3 of Toni Vilander, who clinched the overall GT title on Saturday, came home fourth, with the GTA class-winning No. 91 Wright Motorsports Porsche of Anthony Imperato grabbing a surprise top-five finish overall.

It came after a melee at the start, which saw the No. 31 TR3 Racing Ferrari of Daniel Mancinelli run wide to block Parente before running deep into Turn 1 and collecting Mario Farnbacher’s HART Acura NSX GT3.

The incident, which brought out the race’s one-and-only full course caution, also collected the No. 2 CRP Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Michael Cooper, which along with Mancinelli retired from the race.

Farnbacher was handed incident responsibility for the accident and later parked his car after reporting an issue with the clutch.

It left only seven of the ten starters running at the end.

A late-race issue for Michael Christensen saw the No. 24 Alegra Motorsports Porsche drop to sixth on the final lap, behind GTA winner Imperato.

RESULTS: Race 2

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