After a slow pit stop and 15 minutes spent in the middle of a three-car, tail-to-nose pursuit for the win, Kenton Koch made the winning move to give Random Vandals Racing’s #99 BMW M4 GT3 EVO the victory in Race 2 of GT World Challenge America powered by AWS at Sonoma Raceway.
The BMW of Koch and co-driver Connor De Phillippi ran second for most of the race’s final 15 minutes as Koch tried to get past the #18 RS1 Porsche 911 GT3 R of race leader Alex Sedgwick. The young Englishman was determined to hold off Koch and score his first GT3 race win, holding the BMW off at multiple attempts to pass in the turn seven Chute.
But on the penultimate lap, Koch got the run he wanted out of turn 11, sent his car up the inside at turn one, and eventually passed Sedgwick to take the win – his second of the day, following his Pirelli GT4 America victory earlier that afternoon, also in a Random Vandals BMW!
The Porsche of Sedgwick and Jan Heylen finished second, after Sedgwick took the lead following mid-race pit stops. Race 1 winners Michai Stephens and Mikael Grenier followed it up with third place in their #34 JMF Motorsports Mercedes-AMG GT3.
Stephens finished just four-tenths behind Sedgwick after Grenier started down in 12th place after a disordered Qualifying session to set the Race 2 grid.
The #51 Random Vandals BMW (Bill Auberlen/Varun Choksey) finished fourth – all four Pro cars occupied the top four places overall for the second straight race.
Thanks to the superb driving of Philip Ellis and Jeff Burton, and a little luck with a Safety Car, the #91 Regulator Racing Mercedes-AMG took its first Pro-Am class win of the year and finished fifth overall, only 4.962 seconds off the overall victory.
Burton did his best to maintain track position after starting second with several Pro drivers behind him. When he pitted to hand the car off to Ellis, the Anglo-Swiss driver stared down an 80-second deficit to overall leader Colin Braun in the #04 CrowdStrike by Riley Mercedes.
Ellis got back into the overall top ten but was still a minute behind – then he got the break Regulator Racing hoped for.
With 30 minutes to go, the Full Course Yellow came out after Jay Schreibman crashed his #163 AF Corse Ferrari head-on into the tyre barriers at turn 11. Schreibman was able to walk away from the crash.
This Safety Car set up a frantic 19-minute sprint to the finish, and erased Ellis’ deficit to the cars behind him. He drove through the pack with ease – overtaking four cars in one lap before approaching class leader George Kurtz. Ellis passed Kurtz and drove away with ease to the Pro-Am win.
Kurtz and Braun finished sixth overall, second in Pro-Am, after Braun led from pole for the entirety of his opening stint.
The #29 Turner Motorsport BMW (Justin Rothberg/Robby Foley) held on to the final Pro-Am podium position by just six-tenths in a close fight on the final lap.
In eighth, one place behind, was the #27 CRP Racing Mercedes-AMG (Jason Daskalos/Isaac Sherman) which came back from a terrifying spin going into the turn nine chicane to score solid points. Daskalos held off the #16 AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 (Allam Khodair/Marcelo Hahn) in ninth by two-tenths of a second.
Rounding out the overall top ten from Sonoma was the #88 Archangel Motorsports McLaren 720S GT3 EVO (Todd Coleman/Aaron Telitz), which hoped to use a no-tyre change strategy to its advantage after Telitz ran second during the opening stages of the race.
Instead, Coleman just held on at the front of a six-car train to consolidate his tenth-place result.
GT World Challenge America and the rest of the SRO America paddock will return to action next month at Circuit of the Americas (COTA) on 25-27 April – though GT America powered by AWS will only have to wait two weeks until its next races, at the historic Long Beach Grand Prix.
Images © Fabian Lagunas / SRO Motorsports America
