Under huge pressure, Robert Thorne pulled off a win for K-Pax Racing, bringing home his McLaren a scant .13 seconds over Ryan Dalziel and his Effort Porsche in the Pirelli World Challenge season finale at Miller Motorsport Park. This was the first win for the K-Pax team this season and also the first win for the McLaren 12C GT3 in North America and, with the exception of single seaters, the first McLaren win in the USA since the glory days of Can-Am.
The win for Thorne was a flag to flag effort for the young Colorado based driver. Early on, Thorne was aided by Johnny O’Connell, who hung on to second place for a long time, but appeared to overdo his tires in the process. This held Dalziel back from making an earlier charge, but make no mistake – this race was Thorne’s race. He withstood all the pressure Dalziel could throw at him and still came through for the narrow win.
O’Connell held on to finish 7th, one place in front of Mike Skeen to insure his championship. This is O’Connell’s 3rd title in a row in World Challenge, his 10th championship in his career as well as his 7th in 14 seasons running for GM.
Johnny said, “this championship probably means more to me than any other. It has to be the best of them. For most of the season, we didn’t have the best car and we as a team had to execute to perfection. This team is awesome – there are no egos at all on this team. Every single person is as important as the next.”
The third place finish for Andy Pilgrim clinched the manufacturers title for Cadillac again, their third in a row in the series.
At the start of the race, Guy Smith stalled from his pole position and fell all the way to the back, but he was able recover to finish a charging 5th, one place back of his Bentley teammate. Guy set the race fastest lap in his comeback attempt, the only competitor to dip into the 1:49s.
Johnny O’Connell: “That was really, really tough, almost everywhere this year the car has been perfect but today the car was pretty hard work today. It’s great to take the title, particularly with the big step forward that the World Challenge has taken this year. I hope to be back next year when I am absolutely sure it is going to be even tougher.”
Ryan Dalziel: “That was fun! I have to say first that Robert (Thorne) did an excellent job there for a young guy. He soaked it up even though I threw a lot at him. I didn’t think we had the car to challenge today but it turned out that there were a couple of places that we had a little something for them. I really thought I might be able to do something on the last lap but the traffic we caught was just in the wrong place.”
Robert Thorne: “I’m rally pleased with that, I’m still learning and it was a tough race all the way through. To say that I’m delighted for K-Pax and McLaren would be an understatement – I hope it persuades the team to continue this programme and be back in 2015, and I hope I’m part of it.”
In GTS, the race for the championships became a mess early on. First off, Mark Wilkins brought his Kia into the pits. After some examination under the hood, Mark was informed his drive was over and the frustrated drive walked off, throwing his gloves into the air in despair. Soon after, Nic Jonsson too came into pit lane. He eventually made it back out, but was well down the order. While Mark missed out on the drivers title, unofficially Kia did bring home the manufacturers championship.
The GTS race win went to Jack Baldwin and his Porsche Cayman, but the drivers title went to Lawson Aschenbach and his Black Dog Camaro after finishing second in class, the young man taking a second successive GTS title, the sheen not being taken off one little bit by a failed (first ever) attempt at post race doughnuts ending rapidly with a blown diff!
After a very trying weekend for the Kia Optima effort the one consolation is that they hung on for the Manufacturers Championship despite both cars suffering big problems
Thus ends one outstanding season of competition in the World Challenge.
Gary Horrocks/ Graham Goodwin
