The plan was to be aggressive, but the plan changed as the race went on. Knowing Dane Cameron might not have enough fuel to reach the finish, Pipo Derani used patience, while fighting to hold his position and save fuel, until Cameron was forced to surrender the lead to pit for fuel with 3 minutes, 30 seconds left in the race.
That gave Derani the lead and sent the #31 Whelen Engineering Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R and teammate Felipe Nasr to victory Sunday in the IMSA SportsCar Weekend at Road America. The win pushed them closer to the Daytona Prototype international (DPi) points lead with just three races left in the season.
With their second consecutive victory, Derani and Nasr became the first back-to-back race winners in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship DPi class this season.
“We had a fantastic weekend, perfect, to be honest,” Derani said. “When I was in the car, the (No.) 60 car was completely out of my hands, whatever was going to happen to them. So I was just hitting my marks, focusing on making sure that we could make it to the end with a fuel save.”
Cameron led Derani by more than 12 seconds during the final half-hour of the two-hour, 40-minute race. But the #60 Meyer Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian Acura ARX-05 that Cameron co-drove with Olivier Pla didn’t have enough fuel to reach the finish without a full-course caution.
Having done the numbers, the #31 Action Express Racing crew knew the lead might come back to them. A yellow didn’t happen, Derani maintained his position while saving fuel, and the lead was his again as the clock ran out.
Derani and Nasr moved into second in the DPi driver standings, 41 points behind Filipe Albuquerque and Ricky Taylor, who finished fourth Sunday in the #10 Konica Minolta Acura.
Nasr, who won the Motul Pole Award on Saturday and pushed the #31 to an early lead on Sunday, praised his teammate’s race-ending drive.
“I knew at the same time he was saving the fuel to make it to the end, and he still had the pressure from the cars behind,” Nasr said. “But he did a really good job. A phenomenal drive from Pipo.”
Nasr’s sixth career IMSA win and Derani’s 10th – five weeks after winning the IMSA WeatherTech 240 at Watkins Glen International – pushed them closer to their championship goal.
“It’s hard to believe when you have a perfect weekend like this because it’s so hard,” Nasr said. “A back-to-back win just shows how much work and effort we’re putting into the team. The fight is on. I want to bring this championship to all of us here.”
Harry Tincknell finished 1.594 seconds behind Derani in the #55 Mazda Motorsports Mazda DPi co-driven with Oliver Jarvis. Renger van der Zande and Kevin Magnussen finished third in the #01 V Performance Academy Cadillac DPi-V.R from Chip Ganassi Racing.
LMP2
While Derani patiently waited for the win, Ryan Dalziel and Dwight Merriman went right for it, bolting from fourth to the lead in the LMP2 class and winning by 5.641 seconds in the #18 Era Motorsport ORECA LMP2 07.
The victory was a successful test run for the team’s plans to compete later this month in the 89th 24 Hours of Le Mans with Dalziel, Merriman and Kyle Tilley.
“I absolutely love this place, so I was pushing for it hard, and it paid off,” Dalziel said. “The car was fantastic. We had a good pit stop and a good strategy, and it was just managing the gap.
“I’m not going to say it was easy. No two-and-a-half stint under green and in a prototype in this place is easy. I was relieved I had the big gap at the end because I started feeling it a little bit.”
Gabriel Aubry and John Farano finished second in the #38 Tower Motorsport ORECA. Mikkel Jensen and Ben Keating were third in the #52 PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports ORECA.
LMP3
In LMP3, Colin Braun and Jonathan Bennett also started fourth in class and advanced to victory. Their #54 CORE autosport Ligier JS P320 finished 22.243 seconds ahead of the #38 Performance Tech Motorsports Ligier JS P320 co-driven by Rasmus Lindh and Dan Goldburg.
Once he got the lead, Braun tried to be as careful as possible, while still being fast, in traffic.
“I was focused on trying to have good restarts, being clean in traffic, driving hard by myself but making sure I gave a lot of patience and respect to the guys as I was coming through the GT field,” Braun said. “It’s so easy to make a little mistake and have a little contact and have that ruin your day.”
GTLM
Porsche ruled the day in the Grand Touring portion of Sunday’s IMSA SportsCar Weekend at Road America, with the famed German marque taking first place in both the GT Le Mans (GTLM) and GT Daytona (GTD) classes of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race.
Cooper MacNeil and Matt Campbell capitalized on a two-stop strategy in the #79 WeatherTech Racing Porsche 911 RSR-19 to win the GTLM race ahead of the two Corvette Racing entries. Zacharie Robichon and Laurens Vanthoor followed a similar path, two pit stops, and cruised to the GTD win at the 4.048-mile, 14-turn road course in the Kettle Moraine area of central Wisconsin.
It’s the second win this season for both the #79 and #9. Each was also victorious in March at the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Presented by Advance Auto Parts.
MacNeil started the two-hour, 40-minute race in the #79 Porsche, keeping touch with the Corvettes ahead of him until making the first stop under a full-course caution less than an hour into the race. Campbell wheeled the #79 from there to the finish with just one more stop, nursing the car to the checkered for the last hour on a single tank of fuel.
“It definitely wasn’t easy at times,” Campbell said after earning his fourth IMSA win and second at Road America. “The team was always updating me and giving me the information I needed to be able to do what I had to do with getting the fuel mileage we needed to be able to make it to the end of the race. We did the job we needed to.
“We haven’t had the best of runs since Sebring, and now to get our second win, it’s a fantastic result,” the 26-year-old Australian said. “Especially the way we did it is pretty special by beating the two Corvettes, it’s always harder.”
MacNeil and Campbell, who teamed with Mathieu Jaminet to win at Sebring, benefited Sunday from a drive-through penalty assessed to the No. 4 Corvette Racing Corvette C8.R for wheel spin while the car was on jacks during its final pit stop. It mattered not to MacNeil, the Illinois native who won at his home track and that of sponsor WeatherTech for a second time.
“I couldn’t be more thrilled to get a home win in front of 300-plus (WeatherTech) employees, family, friends and, of course, all the fans who are here this weekend,” MacNeil said. “It’s a huge win for me, obviously this one is very important with it being my home track. It’s definitely up there with Sebring earlier this year.”
MacNeil and Cooper finished 15.855 seconds ahead of the #3 Corvette shared by Jordan Taylor and Antonio Garcia, ending a three-race win streak for the #3. Hindered by the penalty, Nick Tandy and Tommy Milner finished a lap down in third in the #4 Corvette.
Garcia and Taylor lead Milner and Tandy by 214 points in the GTLM standings, with MacNeil just nine points farther back.
GTD
Robichon played the pivotal role in the #9 Pfaff “Plaid” Porsche winning in GTD. The Canadian dove into the pits for fuel and tires just before the first caution to gain valuable track position. On the ensuing restart, he bolted from sixth place to second and a lap later passed Frankie Montecalvo in the #12 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3 for the class lead.
“I think the crew made a fantastic call to bring us in right before the yellow,” said Robichon, who won at Road America for the second time in three years with Pfaff. “I think they saw it coming, so that allowed us to actually get two laps under caution where we were able to warm up the tires. The cars in front of us were all on older tires, so I knew we’d have the advantage.
“I knew it was sort of an important time, so there are times you’re going to make a decision and you’re not sure it’s going to work or worth the risk. And that was one of them. It worked out. With the (No.) 12 car … I kind of forced him into a mistake, probably because he had older tires and was struggling to get them up to temperature, so I used that to my advantage.”
Robichon stayed in front until making his final stop with 57 minutes remaining in the race. Vanthoor took over the #9 and brought it to the finish 11.876 seconds ahead of Robby Foley and Bill Auberlen in the #96 Turner Motorsport BMW M6 GT3.
“Zach did really amazing in his stint. He gave me the race on a golden plateau,” said Vanthoor, a winner at Road America for the first time. “It was a bit of a fuel race as well because, with the yellows, everyone was trying to make it to the end, and there was some tire rubs here as well. I was trying to be smart and manage the fuel numbers and the tires, but it worked out well.”
Auberlen and Foley regained the GTD championship lead with the second-place finish. They are 18 points ahead of #23 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage GT3 drivers Roman De Angelis and Ross Gunn, who finished fourth Sunday. Robichon and Vanthoor moved into third place, 100 points out of the lead.
“Going into the season, the goal was clear: to fight for the championship,” Vanthoor said. “It slipped away a little bit the last few races. Now we’re back and we need to keep this momentum up.”
Gunn and De Angelis hold a 202-point lead over Auberlen and Foley in the IMSA WeatherTech Sprint Cup for GTD competitors in the non-endurance events.
The next race is the Hyundai Monterey SportsCar Championship on 10/12 Sept at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca.
