Koch, De Phillippi Extend Points Lead With Sixth Win of Season

Photo: Fabian Lagunas/SRO

Kenton Koch and Connor De Phillippi extended their GT World Challenge America powered by AWS Pro class championship lead with their sixth victory of the season in Saturday’s round at Barber Motorsports Park.

De Phllippi took the No. 99 Random Vandals Racing BMW M4 GT3 EVO to a 4.643-second win over the No. 34 JMF Motorsports Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo of Mikael Grenier in a 90-minute contest that featured two early yellows.

Pole-sitter Philip Ellis led the opening stanza until the pit stop and driver change, which saw the No. 91 Regulator Racing Mercedes-AMG double stint its Pirelli tires.

Co-driver Jeff Burton emerged as the overall leader but was quickly passed by De Philllippi with 33 minutes to go.

Random Vandals scored a double podium with the No. 51 BMW of Bill Auberlen and Varun Choksey finishing third overall and in the Pro class.

It came despite contact between Grenier and Choksey while battling for second with 43 minutes to go, which went the way of the Mercedes-AMG factory driver.

The No 18 RS1 Porsche 911 GT3 R of Jan Heylen and Alex Sedgwick was fourth.

Turner Motorsport took the Pro-Am class win with Robby Foley and Justin Rothberg in the No. 29 BMW, which finished fifth overall.

Foley got around Burton for the class lead with 21 minutes to go and edged out the No. 11 DXDT Racing Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R of Matt Bell, who finished second in class.

Contact between Burton and the No. 27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo of Darren Turner resulted in the Aston Martin veteran spinning with 15 minutes to go, and drop out of a likely podium finish.

It opened the door for the No. 32 GMG Racing Porsche of Tom Sargent and Kyle Washington to finish third in class.

Burton, on double-stinted tires, dropped down the running order in the closing minutes with multiple moments, finishing 11th overall and seventh in class.

Am class honors went to the No. 6 Dollahite Racing Ford Mustang GT3 of Eric Powell and Scott Dollahite, who gained ground on championship leaders Ozz Negri and Jay Schreibman, which had a slow pit stop.

The No. 50 Chouest Povoledo Racing Corvette was the race’s only retirement with splitter damage after two separate spins by Ross Chouest that brought out the two yellows.

Race 2 of the weekend is scheduled for Sunday at 1:45 p.m. CST with live coverage on SRO’s GT World YouTube channel, as well as on Twitch and RACER Network.

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