Sargent: Experienced Lineup Paying Early Season Dividends

Photo: GMG Racing

Tom Sargent believes the largely unchanged effort at GMG Racing for a third season in GT World Challenge America powered by AWS has paid dividends compared to their Pro-Am competition in the new-look championship.

The Porsche Motorsport North America Selected Driver proved to be the star of the season-opening weekend at Sonoma Raceway, where the U.S.-based Australian set the outright fastest lap in qualifying, as well as in the three-hour race, and took a commanding victory in Pro-Am alongside co-driver Kyle Washington.

“I don’t know what we got right that weekend but we were extremely dominant,” Sargent told Sportscar365. “We got everything right. It was one of the best cars I’ve ever driven in my life; it basically drove itself almost.

“The [Porsche 911 GT3 R] Evo was good. We just had the setup right. Sonoma was generally not a very good track for us. For whatever reason, we struggled there in the past but we got it right [this time].

“That was proven by what I was able to do but what Kyle was able to do as well. That was probably the best I’ve ever seen him race, was in that race. He was fast, smooth, consistent and made no mistakes.

“It comes together when you have everything right. When the car is not 100 percent right, you struggle, you make mistakes and that kind of thing happens.

“That’s proof that we had everything right. We had everything right with the team, the pit stops, the setup with the engineering. It made the driving that much easier, and it was just an enjoyable weekend for sure.

“No doubt things were favorable for us.

“Obviously Porsche being the only manufacturer that could double on fuel was quite a benefit for us. That excluded the other manufacturers and made it a Porsche race.

“I don’t know if that’s going to be the same for the rest of the rounds but we’ll take those when we can get them.

“That helped us catapult into the top-three and then our pace was able to do the rest from there.”

The 22-year-old, who is coming off LMGT3 class victory in his European Le Mans Series debut earlier this month at Barcelona and a sweep of the Porsche Carrera Cup North America weekend at Long Beach, attributed some of their early success down to the heavily overhauled Pro-Am class.

Last year’s championship duo, Robby Foley and Justin Rothberg, have moved up to the Pro class, while DXDT Racing’s Philip Ellis and Jeff Burton have not returned to the series.

“There’s a slight change-up in the field with some drivers leaving and some drivers coming,” he said.

“In a whole, I feel like the field is big and nice. There’s still some extremely good drivers there. There’s also some newer drivers there. We have a really big spread this year.

“Do I think the competition is less than last year? No. We lost cars like the Ellis/Burton car, which was extremely competitive. Other than that, the Turner car got moved to Pro but we beat them on the weekend by quite a lot.

“We’ll get a bit more of an idea of what the competition looks like later in the year.

“It’s really cool to see so many Porsches, though. Generally it wasn’t the most well-supported brand. It’s maybe bigger in other countries than the U.S., but this year, it’s really showing that it’s there.

“We have six or seven Porsches in GT World Challenge and even in GT America, there’s a bunch. So it’s quite cool to see as well, just being someone who’s passionate about the brand and is affiliated with the brand, that’s very cool to see.”

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