Adam Adelson and Elliott Skeer completed a perfect weekend of racing at Sonoma Raceway as they drove the #120 Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R to the win in Race 2 of GT World Challenge America’s opening weekend.
Skeer and Adelson led every lap of the 90-minute race, which began with Skeer holding its first-place starting position and maintaining a steady one-second gap over the #04 CrowdStrike by Riley Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Colin Braun behind him.
After 50 solid minutes behind the wheel from Skeer, a perfect pit stop from the Wright Motorsports crew helped give Adelson a five-second advantage, with George Kurtz now in second aboard the #04 CrowdStrike Mercedes. Adelson would take the win by over eight seconds after 57 laps.
“It’s a dream come true,” Adelson said after the race. “To think I’d be racing in the Pro Class in my second year of GT3 competition is amazing. I didn’t think I would even be here, and to be able to sweep the weekend on our first go around, that’s just incredible.
“I want to say a huge thanks to the whole Wright Motorsports family. Porsche gave us an amazing car which is absolutely mega to drive around this track. Elliott made my job today easy, so huge thanks to this guy too.”
“It’s incredible, right?” asked a jubilant Skeer. “It’s not just the competitiveness out there, but to have the team we have, the co-driver I have, this car, this track, and then to go out there and to compete and to do well like this, these are the days we live for. To do it with Wright Motorsports in a Porsche with Adam is just a perfect weekend.
“We’re just keeping the momentum going and just enjoying every day and executing as we do.”
The Wright Motorsports duo will take the momentum of this perfect weekend – and the 50 championship points – down to the streets of Long Beach when they make their third scheduled appearance in the IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship in two weeks.
Kurtz finished second overall and CrowdStrike by Riley completed a Pro-Am class sweep of the weekend – but not by the margin they’d hoped, after a costly five-second penalty was given to the #04 Mercedes when a mechanic dropped a tyre during a pit stop and let it roll out of its designated stall.
It gave Samantha Tan the chance to try and steal the class win if she could stay within that margin, but Kurtz was able to build his advantage back to over five seconds to cover the time penalty.
“The crew just said ‘hey, we got a penalty’ and I hammered down,” explained Kurtz. “I just really wanted to focus and click off the laps. I had a little bit left in the tank and gave it everything. I had qualifying laps at the end, and we built a gap, but I knew I had to win by more than five seconds.
“The CrowdStrike by Riley guys gave us a great car and it was really good at the end of the race so I was able to run some of my fastest laps.”
“It was definitely an intense battle,” said his co-driver Braun. “It was a great result. I’m super proud of George, what a drive there at the end, those were some really impressive laps. Big hats off to SRO and Sonoma. They did a great job with a kind of crazy weekend, but in the end we had some great racing.
“I am really proud of this CrowdStrike by Riley team. This is definitely a win that G.K. earned. He did a great job, that was like qualifying pace for him at the end. It was super impressive, what a fantastic drive.”
Tan and Neil Verhagen finished third overall in the #38 STR BMW M4 GT3, followed by the #08 DXDT Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Scott Smithson and Bryan Sellers who finished fourth – in the last race for this car before the duo of Smithson and Sellers transitions to the new Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.
Kurtz and Braun lead the Pro-Am championship standings with 50 points, followed by Tan and Verhagen with 36 points.
STR’s #28 BMW (Varun Choksey/Bill Auberlen) held on to finish fifth overall and second in Pro. Choksey had to hold off the hard-charging #93 Racers Edge Motorsports Acura NSX GT3 of Luca Mars in the final minutes of the race, but Mars and Zach Veach would settle for sixth.
Philip Ellis’ ballistic charge through the pack and forceful final lap overtake on Justin Rothberg gave Ellis and Jeff Burton seventh place in the #91 DXDT Racing Mercedes. Using the alternate driver deployment again, Burton stayed on the lead lap to give Ellis a chance to gain ground in the second half of the race.
Rothberg and Robby Foley came away with eighth place in the #29 Turner Motorsport BMW. The #8 Flying Lizard Motorsports Aston Martin Vantage GT3 (Elias Sabo/Andy Lee) and #32 GMG Racing Porsche (Kyle Washington/Tom Sargent) battled from lights to flag but it was the Flying Lizard Vantage that would take ninth place in the team’s final race based out of Sonoma.
The #19 Esses Racing Mercedes (Will Hardeman/Adam Carroll) and #50 Chouest Povoledo Racing Mercedes (Ross Chouest/Aaron Povoledo) finished 11th and 12th.
GT World Challenge America returns in four weeks for the second round of the season, at historic Sebring International Raceway on 3-5 May.
Images © Fabian Lagunas / SRO Motorsports America
