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GT World Challenge America

Pfaff Victorious in Hectic Race 2 at Portland

Scott Hargrove, Wolf Henzler give Pfaff its first win since St. Pete in surprising GT Race 2…

Photo: Brian Cleary/PWC

Pfaff Motorsports scored its first win since March in a hectic second Pirelli World Challenge GT race at Portland International Raceway on Sunday afternoon.

Wolf Henzler kept Parker Chase at bay to score the team’s first PWC win since the season-opener at St. Pete along with co-driver Scott Hargrove in the No. 96 Porsche 911 GT3 R.

The win puts Hargrove back into the championship battle while rival Toni Vilander finished down in seventh after serving a drive-through penalty from the lead.

The race was turned on its head when a crash between Daniel Morad’s CRP Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 and the Dream Racing Motorsport Lamborghini Huracan Super Trofeo brought the safety car out during the pit stop window.

This initially put Wei Lu’s TR3 Racing Ferrari 488 GT3 into the lead ahead of Chase’s TruSpeed Autosport Audi R8 LMS GT3.

The top four positions reversed at the restart with 12 minutes to go, with Henzler inheriting the lead over pole-sitter Vilander, Chase and Lu.

While the Porsche driver was forced to concede a position for cutting the chicane in avoidance of a spun car on the restart, Vilander was called into the pits for a penalty given for a pit stop infringement.

This moved the German driver back into the lead ahead of Chase, who would ultimately finish 0.5 seconds down, and ahead of Rodrigo Baptsita in the sole remaining K-PAX Bentley Continental GT3.

Chase, Dalziel Double Up in Pro-Am

While Chase was unable to pass Henzler for the overall lead, he did hold on for the Pro-Am win from second overall, sweeping the weekend along with Ryan Dalziel.

The TruSpeed drivers started from third on the grid and ran behind TR3’s Jeff Segal and Wei Lu for most of the race before the Ferrari dropped back to fifth overall in the closing stages, albeit holding on to second in class.

It is Chase and Dalziel’s fourth straight SprintX Pro-Am win and fifth of the season.

Caesar Bacarella and Martin Fuentes continued their dominance of the Am class with a sixth-place overall finish in their Squadra Corse Garage Italia Ferrari, despite a spin for Fuentes on the opening lap.

RESULTS: Race 2

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

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