A perfect weekend at Road America ended in the best possible outcome for the two DXDT Racing Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.Rs: An overall 1-2 finish, and victories in the Pro and Pro-Am categories.
The #63 Corvette of Alec Udell and Tommy Milner rolled to its fifth overall win of the year and sixth Pro class win in as many races – while the #08 Corvette of Bryan Sellers and rookie Bryson Morris finished a season-best second overall and won Pro-Am for the first time this season.
For the first time in a weekend of constant on-and-off rain showers, the sun was out over Road America – and the rain finally kept away for the final race of the SRO America meeting.
Robby Foley started from the pole in his blue and black #29 Turner Motorsport BMW M4 GT3, and while Milner started second on the grid, he was soon overtaken by the #120 Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R of Elliott Skeer.
Foley led all the way to the end of his opening stint, but co-driver Justin Rothberg felt something wrong with the right-front tyre as he left the pits. The flat tyre came apart and Rothberg limped slowly back to the pits – the #29 Turner BMW would finish 15th and last overall, two laps down.
The race for the victory was decided during the pit window. Milner brought the #63 DXDT Corvette in at the first opportunity to hand it off to Udell, while Skeer came in a lap later to give the #120 Wright Porsche to Adam Adelson.
Adelson left the pits and stayed just ahead of Milner. With 40 minutes left, a trio of Pro-Am cars, making their pit stops at the end of the window, exited the pits directly in the path of the Pro leaders. As Udell and Adelson tried to get through the slower cars cleanly, Adelson ran wide out of turn one and allowed Udell to slip through into the Pro class lead.
Meanwhile, Morris in the #08 Corvette was able to slip around the #32 GMG Porsche of Kyle Washington to take the Pro-Am class lead and eventually follow Udell through into second place overall.
They ran in that order to the end of the race – after 42 laps, Udell took the chequered flag on the way to the #63 Corvette’s latest victory, 6.6 seconds ahead of Morris – who scored his first GT World Challenge America class win alongside the veteran Sellers.
Adelson and Skeer finished third overall – by six-tenths of a second – and second place in Pro to maintain their advantage in the championship standings. With three races left in the 2024 season, the Wright Motorsports duo leads by 35 points over the DXDT Racing pair of Udell and Milner who’ve been perfect through every race they’ve entered.
Bouncing back from a strategic miscue in Race 1, the #38 ST Racing BMW of Samantha Tan and Neil Verhagen finished fourth overall and second in Pro-Am. That result stretches their Pro-Am points advantage back out to 45 points over Turner Motorsport’s drivers.
A good weekend for Racers Edge Motorsports concluded with a fifth-place finish for the #93 Acura NSX GT3 of Luca Mars and Zach Veach. They led the remainder of the Pro class to the finish – the #28 ST Racing BMW (Bill Auberlen/Varun Choksey) in sixth, and the #99 Random Vandals Racing BMW (Madison Snow/Kenton Koch), which finally enjoyed a clean run to seventh.
The #91 Regulator Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 (Philip Ellis/Jeff Burton) charged through the field to finish eighth place overall and secure the final Pro-Am podium position, with Ellis mowing through the pack in his closing stint.
The #85 RS1 Porsche (Jake Pedersen/Trent Hindman) came home in ninth, one spot ahead of the #8 Flying Lizard Motorsports BMW (Elias Sabo/Andy Lee) in tenth.
After an early drive-through penalty for having tyres and tyre equipment on the grid past the designated time slot, the #163 AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 of Jay Schreibman and Oswaldo Negri Jnr was able to overhaul the #19 Esses Racing Mercedes-AMG (Will Hardeman/Alan Metni) early on and eventually claim the Am class win in Race 2.
Schreibman and Negri finished 13th overall, one place ahead of Hardeman and Metni, who suffered two penalties – one for speeding in the pits and another for a pit stop infringement – taking them out of contention to win the duel.
GT World Challenge America returns in three weeks for the final double-header weekend of the season, at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama on 7/8 September.
Images © Fabian Lagunas / SRO Motorsports America
