K-PAX Withdraws Parente, Soucek Car from Race 2

Photo: Brian Cleary/PWC

K-PAX Racing has withdrawn its No. 9 Bentley Continental GT3 from today’s second Pirelli World Challenge GT race at Portland after sustaining damage in Race 1.

Alvaro Parente crashed out of Saturday’s opening race forcing the car that he co-drives with Andy Soucek to retire with damage.

“After Alvaro came into pit lane after the incident, unfortunately the engine had lost water from hitting the wall and got hot,” Program Manager Darren Law told Sportscar365.

“We believe that engine is damaged. Rather than risk having an issue on track, we decided to pull that car.

“We had a spare motor in the truck but that went to Rodrigo [Baptista] because he’s in the points hunt, so we switched out motors there.”

Baptista and Maxime Soulet came to Portland fifth in the SprintX standings while the Brazilian driver is also fifth in the overall classification, including both Sprint and SprintX races.

Their No. 3 K-PAX Bentley also retired in Race 1 on Saturday with an unspecified mechanical issue which has now been fixed with the engine swap.

Law confirmed that Parente’s car will be back on track for the next race, saying there was a “100 percent” certainty that both his cars will be on the grid for the Aug. 10-12 races at Utah Motorsports Campus.

R. Ferri Motorsport will start this afternoon’s race, which will get underway at 2:25 p.m. PDT, on pole. 

Jake Kilshaw

Jake Kilshaw is a UK-based journalist. He is a graduate of Politics and International Relations.