Wayne Taylor Racing scored their first ever race win at Road America (and their fourth of the 2022 season) to take the Championship lead after a hard fought battle that looked set to be an Acura one-two until the closing stages.
Both Acuras had time in the lead of the race with Filipe Albuquerque hitting the front for the final time with 24 minutes to go, the Portuguese driver seeing an opportunity on traffic to grab the advantage from Oliver Jarvis in the #60 Meyer Shank ARX 05 and passing for the lead with his #10 Acura almost fully on the grass as the pair worked to get around Ryan Eversey’s GT class Rick Ware Racing Acura NSX.
“I timed it perfectly and took a lot of risks going to the left with half the car on the grass,” Albuquerque said. “Then it was done. It was chaotic.”
Jarvis tried to defend but the following corner was Albuquerque’s and thereafter it was about pressure from behind from the chasing Cadillacs.
Worse was to come for the #60 after contact from the rear from a Cadillac with just minutes to go, the Acura running wide at the next turn, Jarvis losing control and hitting the wall on the inside hard.
The #60 suffered significant front-end damage but the team kept Jarvis out on track as the race would finish under caution, the Acura holding up astonishingly well after a heavy hit, Jarvis and team-mate Tom Blomqvist though would moss out on a podium finish and would lose their points lead to the #10 crew with just Petit Le Mans remaining in the DPI era.
“It feels good, but it never lasts long,” Albuquerque’s teammate Ricky Taylor said. “What we’ve learned this year is if you have the points lead, you’re not safe. Every time we get it, it goes the other way again. It’s flip-flopped I don’t know how many times.”
Taylor found himself in a tricky situation during his first stint, as rain began to fall while he was on slicks. He managed to get the car back to the pits by Lap 30, but the lead was gone, and he had fallen back to eighth overall.
“I was just trying to survive,” Taylor said. “Honestly, I didn’t know if I was doing a very good job. I just saw that the guys on wets were gone. They asked what we wanted to do on the next stop and I said, ‘Put Filipe in.’”
“If you give him the car in position, he’s going to go win it, and he did,” Taylor said. “We’re getting spoiled by Filipe, honestly. We don’t have to get out of pit lane first anymore, he just does it on the racetrack. We need to keep ourselves realistic. He’s not a normal driver, (but) that’s not always going to happen. He’s just been working some serious magic this year.”
Albuquerque began picking off one car after another, reaching fourth place by Lap 36, then second by Lap 47.
“We had more to lose,” Albuquerque said. “We had to stay ahead of the Shank car, and they were on rain tires and about a minute ahead of us. I was so desperate and angry about the situation because I could see us not winning it. Then it came around to us and we were back in the game.”
Earl Bamber finished second in the #02 Cadillac Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R he shares with Alex Lynn, while the #01 Cadillac Racing sister car co-driven by Sebastien Bourdais and Renger van der Zande finished third.
The #5 JDC-Miller Motorsports Cadillac of Richard Westbrook led for a significant chunk of the race after the team made the right call to put on wets in the first routine pit stops the predicted bad weather arriving at the end of the first hour.
Thereafter Westbrook drove through and away from the field as the other DPis struggled on slicks, passed by a number of the LMP2s and even struggling for a short while to fend off the quicker LMP3s.
The impressive JDC Miller run though was spoiled, somewhat ionically by a Full Course Yellow called to assist the sister #90 LMP3 car!
Later, in defence of a podium position, Tristan Vautier got somewhat too involved with a spirited and rather physical attack from Renger van der Zande, the pair running off track at Canada Corner, the JDC/ Mustang Sampling car the biggest loser with both Ganassi-run Cadillac getting by.
The #31 Whelen Cadillac had to fight bak after a stop under green was needed for Pipo Derani to have an advertising harding removed from the front of the car after being pitched off in traffic early in the race.
LMP2
Ryan Dalziel won a fuel-saving battle with Louis Deletraz in the final phase of the race to take a second consecutive Road America win in LMP2 for Era Motorsport’s #18 ORECA.
Dalziel closed in on LMP2 leader Louis Deletraz in the #8 Tower Motorsport ORECA after a race restart from full-course caution with 36 minutes to go. Both were in fuel-save mode but Dalziel still found his chance to overtake Deletraz in the Canada Corner section of the 4.048-mile track. Two laps later, another yellow flag waved when the No. 60 Acura made contact with the wall in Turn 11 and the race ended under caution.
“We were trying to save fuel and it seemed like we were able to save a little easier than (Deletraz) was,” Dalziel explained. “The team were somewhat telling me to hang tight and try to pass him in the pits, but I just saw an opportunity and it happened.
“He had a bad run out of the Carousel and I had a pretty good run on him. He chose the middle and I chose the right, then he moved a little bit and then I moved him.”
With all cars starting the race on dry-condition tires but rain making an early appearance, conditions became quickly dicey. But Merriman held strong in the opening stint, moving up three positions to second before making a pit stop and turning the car over to Dalziel 40 minutes into the race, IMSA having amended minimum driving times to 30 minutes for all bar the Dpi runners in anticipation of a potential weather interruption.
“It was a little tricky,” Merriman said. “We were on slick tires and trying to get a feel for it. Managed to get up to P2 by the end of the stint, which was great. I tried not to make any mistakes and find some pace.”
Deletraz dominated the middle of the race, leading 37 laps until Dalziel pulled off the late pass for the win. By finishing second, the #8 and co-driver John Farano retained the LMP2 points lead, though it was trimmed to 33 points over Dalziel, Merriman and the #18 with only the Motul Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta remaining.
The #20 High Class Racing OECA of Dennis Andersen and Anders Fjordbach would complete the class podium.
LMP3
Felipe Fraga and Gar Robinson held it together through changing weather conditions to win the LMP3 class.
“That was more stressful than the (Rolex 24),” Robinson said. “Ever since I’ve come up here, you test and you’re fast in qualifying, and then it rains. And if you’re not fast, the weather will be perfect. Or it’ll be perfect, and you’ll be fast, and some crazy yellow will come out. This is one of the hardest races I’ve ever tried to win.”
Fraga’s stint in the rain put the #74 Riley Motorsports Ligier JS P320 in the lead, and he kept it there for the team’s third win of the season.
“It wasn’t smooth, but the team always called the right strategy,” Fraga said. “The car was perfect, very good to drive in the rain and very good to drive in the dry. I just brought it home. It wasn’t easy. It was tense.”
The #13 AWA co-driven by Orey Fidani and Matthew Bell finished second, with the #54 CORE Autosport co-driven by Jon Bennett and Colin Braun in third.
The #33 Sean Creech Motorsport Ligier was eliminated after Malthe Jakobsen took evasive action after Jarrett Andretti ran off and spun in front of the #33.
GTD Pro
The #14 Lexus RC F GT3 driven by Jack Hawksworth and Ben Barnicoat took a hard fought GTD Pro win leading 51 of the 62 laps completed to claim their first victory together of the 2022 season.
With the race finishing under caution they came home just 0.760 second ahead of GTD PRO championship leaders Matt Campbell and Mathieu Jaminet in the #9 Pfaff Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3R, with Antonio Garcia and Jordan Taylor taking third place in the #3 Corvette Racing Corvette C8.R.
Hawksworth earned the Motul Pole Award Saturday at a track where the Lexus has traditionally excelled. He led the opening stint of the race, handing off to Barnicoat after 40 minutes when the first of four full course cautions flew.
Switching to Michelin rain tires from slicks, Barnicoat briefly lost the lead to Jaminet in the Pfaff Porsche. But the shower was brief, requiring a switch back to dry tires at the next round of yellow flag pit stops.
Barnicoat took the lead soon after the subsequent restart, with one hour and eight minutes remaining in the timed race. Jaminet was able to keep the Lexus within a second, but never seriously challenged as Barnicoat scored his second career IMSA win, and his first in GTD PRO.
The BMW M4 GT3 of BMW Team RLL finished well down the overall order after the car stopped on track early in the race requiring a lengthy pit stop to replace the ECU.
“That was definitely I’d say the toughest race I’ve ever done,” said Barnicoat. “I’d never really done a lot of driving in this car in the wet before, and I made a mistake and the # 9 got past me. I was really determined not to let that get the better of us.
“The fuel number I had to hit for the strategy was just crazy,” he added. “We knew it was going to be an extreme challenge, and to keep him behind while doing that was the toughest thing I’ve ever done. The yellow at the end fell for us and I was able to hold him off.”
Jaminet said he was disappointed to see the caution fly with less than 10 minutes remaining, but he admitted that he was unlikely to be able to pass Barnicoat unless the Lexus ran into a problem.
“It seemed like they found the right switch at the end to get some extra top speed they didn’t have at the beginning,” Jaminet commented. “We’ve been sometimes lucky this year and today was maybe a bit against us.
“All in all, it was a good race, and P2 is quite good for our championship with only two rounds to go.”
With the Road America victory, Barnicoat, who ranks second in the GTD PRO standings to Campbell and Jaminet, closed the gap slightly. But the Porsche duo still hold a comfortable 227-point cushion as the season winds down.
GTD
Russell Ward and Philip Ellis played the stealth game to nab the GTD class victory at Road America in the #57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT GT3.
Ward ran the first 40 minutes of the two-hour, 40-minute WeatherTech Championship clash before handing the car off to Ellis. But the team elected to keep Ellis on slick tires at a time when the track was damp and most of his competitors were on Michelin rain tires.
Ellis completed a treacherous stint without making an unplanned pit stop to change tires, assisted by a timely full course caution.
“That’s when it started to turn for us,” Ward remarked. “We still had to overtake a couple cars and jump guys in pit lane, so it wasn’t an easy battle. The strategy was good, and the pit stops were great.”
Ellis took the lead on the 46th of the 60 laps the GTD class completed and was comfortably in front when a late accident caused the race to end under yellow.
That came after a penalty for the then leading #79 Weathertech racing Mercedes AMG, Dani Juncadella rejoining under caution with the pit exit red light on!
Robert Megennis and Jeff Westphal finished second in the #39 CarBahn with Peregrine Racing Lamborghini Huracán GT3, while Frankie Montecalvo and Aaron Telitz capped a great day for Lexus by taking the final podium finish in the #12 RC F GT3.
“We were still on slicks when everybody else was on rain tires and immediately fell to the back of the field,” said Ellis. “I just tried to stay alive on slicks, so we didn’t have to make an extra pit stop. Then we gambled for the second full course yellow, and that kind of saved us at the end.”
“Philip was the star,” added Ward. “This has been coming, and it feels good.”
GTD points leader Steven McAleer finished only eighth in the #32 Team Korthoff Motorsports Mercedes, immediately behind his closest pursuers, Ryan Hardwick and Jan Heylen in the #16 Wright Motorsports Porsche. McAleer has a 36-point advantage with two races remaining in the 2022 campaign; three other teams remain within 100 points.
IMSA’s GTD PRO and GTD classes headline the Michelin GT Challenge at VIRginia International Raceway, August 26-28. The 2022 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship wraps up with the Motul Petit Le Mans, Sept. 28-Oct. 1 at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.
