OAK Racing’s disappointment at losing the Watkins Glen Six Hours on a late restart was washed away in the champagne that followed a dominant performance at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. The Mobil 1 SportsCar Grand Prix presented by Hawk Performance was the ninth round of United SportsCar’s 14-race TUDOR Championship, and Gustavo Yacaman and Olivier Pla drove a fairly untroubled race to score a 7.9sec win over the Spirit of Daytona Racing Corvette DP, the car that beat them at the Glen.
And if that sounds like a close margin of victory, Pla was merely paying out the line and being extra cautious in traffic in that final stint, while Richard Westbrook was being his typically aggressive, nothing-to-lose self after earlier setbacks.
Note too, that the race went without yellow-flag periods, despite some sizable collisions.
In the GT Le Mans category, the Corvette Racing No. 3 of Antonio Garcia and Jan Magnussen scored its fourth consecutive win in the TUDOR Championship, beating the Dodge SRT Viper GTS-Rs of Jonathan Bomarito/Kuno Wittmer and Marc Goossens/Dominik Farnbacher, a result that echoed the American Le Mans Series race here last year.
GT Daytona provided the late-race thrills…and, in fact, thrills throughout. Ultimately, the Jeroen Bleekemolen/Ben Keating Viper Exchange Dodge Viper GT3-R grabbed the lead on the last lap from the Park Place Racing Porsche 911 GT America of Kevin Estre/Patrick Lindsey.
A bold start saw Scott Sharp slot the No. 1 Extreme Speed Motorsports HPD ARX-03b into first, but Yacaman soon reasserted himself, and the Corvette DPs of Action Express Racing and Spirit of Daytona also moved into the top three. While the track was clear, the Morgan-Nissan was able to set lap times some half a second quicker than its pursuers, but once they started hitting traffic, the DPs were at least able to slow the rate at which they were losing out.
Fittipaldi made contact with a GT car which damaged some bodywork and caused a puncture, which dropped the AXR car out of the lead battle in the first half-hour of the race. However, his threat was replaced by another one at the halfway mark as Ryan Dalziel pushed the ESM HPD No. 1 until it was only 5sec behind Michael Valiante (SDR) and 15sec from OAK Racing’s leader.
Then, as Valiante handed over to Westbrook, seatbelt problems caused the stop to drag out, allowing Dalziel to emerge from his pit stop some 15sec ahead of the No. 90. Still the Scot didn’t have a clear shot at closing down the lead car – now driven by Olivier Pla – as Jordan Taylor had the Wayne Taylor Racing Corvette DP up into second place, and the car’s straightline speed was keeping him out of reach. With 55 minutes to go, it became a moot point, as Dalziel brought the HPD into the pits with a broken exhaust header.
That left Pla with an 11sec margin over Taylor, with Westbrook a further 15sec down, contending with a gear selection issue which teammate Valiante had been wrestling with almost from the start. Nonetheless, Westbrook closed down the WTR Corvette until, with half an hour to go, he was filling his mirrors; after a few laps he spotted his chance and grabbed second from the championship leaders. Westbrook then made a determined go of closing down OAK’s Morgan-Nissan, but it was too much to ask and the gap only concertinaed whenever they hit traffic.
From the drop of the green, the GTLM battle was a thriller between the No. 93 Dodge SRT Viper GTS-R and the No. 3 Corvette Racing C7.R, with local hero Kuno Wittmer unable to shake off Jan Magnussen, especially once the pair hit traffic. However, this battle was interrupted when Jonathan Edwards’ BMW Z4 GTE, on an out lap, ushered Wittmer off the track and through the grass.
Remarkably, the Viper survived this trip relatively unscathed but the incident did necessitate a slightly longer hand-over to teammate Jonathan Bomarito as the car was checked thoroughly at the front end, where it had dug into soil still saturated from this morning’s heavy rain.
That was enough to hand the class lead to the Corvette, now driven by Garcia. Once the No. 3 took the lead, there was seemingly nothing Bomarito could do to close it down, and he crossed the line some 10sec behind the ’Vette, but 25sec ahead of the other GTLM Viper, piloted by Goossens/Farnbacher.
That third place could probably have fallen instead to the second Corvette C7.R, although it never had the pace of its stablemate. However, early in the race with Tommy Milner at the wheel, it was punted into a spin when Bill Sweedler in the GTD-class No. 555 AIM Autosport Ferrari accidentally speared the yellow car’s right-rear corner, taking both of them off the track. (Sweedler not only lost a bunch of time on the grass, he also received a stop-and-go penalty.) Gavin/Milner wound up seventh, therefore, just ahead of the Falken Tire Porsche of Wolf Henzler/Bryan Sellers.
Edwards/Dirk Muller finished a lapped fourth in GTLM in the BMW Z4 GTE, two places ahead of their teammates Andy Priaulx/Bill Auberlen, with the Porsche 911 RSR of Nick Tandy and Richard Lietz as the meat in the Bimmer sandwich.
In GTD, Markus Palttala in the Turner Motorsports BMW Z4 grabbed the initiative from the pole-sitting Viper Exchange Dodge Viper GT3-R (ABOVE), but then made an error that allowed Ben Keating to pilot the V10 monster back into the class lead. However, these two were inseparable, and just past the 40min mark, the BMW was back ahead, with the Porsche 911s of Patrick Lindsey (Park Place Racing) and Mario Farnbacher (Alex Job Racing) in close attendance.
In fact, going into the second half of the race, it was these Porsches that hit the front, as Kevin Estre took over the Park Place car. Dane Cameron, who was now in the Z4, muscled his way past Farnbacher but it proved pointless as a harsh stop-and-go penalty was issued for a dropped wheelnut rolling outside the Turner Motorsport pitbox.
This promoted the Viper back up into second (although apparently unable to do anything about the Estre-driven Porsche out front) and JDX Racing’s Porsche 911 GT America, now driven by Jan Heylen, into third. However, JDX also got pinged for equipment outside its pitbox, and the resultant penalty dropped Heylen down to seventh in class.
Cameron got the Z4 back into third when he passed the No. 23 AJR Porsche, now driven by Ian James, but he was still over 40sec behind Bleekemolen and looking for a yellow flag in order to make further progress. And to be honest, it looked like Bleekemolen would need that, too, if he was to have any chance of hunting down that well-driven Park Place Porsche. However, he started to charge in the final 20 minutes, as both he and the Viper had been kind to the Continental Tires.
When the GTLM cars came up to lap the GTD cars for the final time, some organized chaos ensued, as the GTD drivers weren’t willing to sacrifice their own battles to allow the quicker cars through, and the GTLM drivers placed fifth through eighth were getting aggressive so as not to lose a position. Eventually, a particularly hard move from a GTLM Porsche nudged the lead GTD Porsche aside leaving just enough of a gap to insert a Viper, as Bleekemolen discovered to his delight. Estre fought back cleanly, but when he outbraked himself on that final lap, the Dodge’s win was sealed.
Leading results - 133 laps:
Pos Cl Drivers Team/Car Time/Gap
1. P Yacaman/Pla OAK Morgan-Nissan
2. P Westbrook/Valiante Spirit Corvette DP +7.886s
3. P Taylor/Taylor Taylor Corvette DP +20.943s
4. P Fittipaldi/Barbosa Action Express Corvette DP +1m10.730s
5. P Negri Jr/Pew Michael Shank Riley-Ford -2 laps
6. GTLM Garcia/Magnussen Corvette -6 laps
7. GTLM Bomarito/Wittmer SRT Viper -6 laps
8. P Miller/Nunez SpeedSource Mazda -6 laps
9. GTLM Goosens/Farnbacher SRT Viper -6 laps
10. GTLM Edwards/Muller RLL BMW -7 laps
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