It was not the result Wayne Taylor Racing has come to expect in 2017 – off the podium at the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen and done with a dominant five-race win streak. 

At the drop of the green flag, Ricky Taylor’s Konica Minolta Cadillac DPi-V.R was pushed wide in Turn 1, leading to contact through the esses with Olivier Pla’s No. 52 PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports Ligier JS P217-Gibson. With damage to the right-side suspension, Taylor skipped The Boot section to bring the car into the pits. When he drove out the team was six laps down.

“It was really frustrating,” Ricky Taylor said. “I was just trying to get around the [Action Express Mustang Sampling Cadillac] – he had a bit of a bad start – and made my way up along the side of the 52 just to make sure I could get a good run out of Turn 1. I was alongside [the 52] and had the car to where we were going to touch. It was only going to be a rub. But it looked like he kind of shot up into me, maybe he had a moment there just past the apex, and kind of shot up into me and just got me in the [right-front] wheel.

“Normally, I don’t think that would’ve broken anything, but it broke the right-front toe link and I really couldn’t turn left. I feel bad if I got in anybody’s way after that. I was going as fast as I could and I didn’t know I wasn’t going to be able to turn left until I turned in. I was already committed and almost gave the [VisitFlorida Racing] car another bad weekend. But, the Konica Minolta boys got it all back together, took their time to make sure everything was right. We were a little too far down to make the laps back.

“We salvaged some points. I am excited to get to Canadian Tire Motorsports Park in five days and put this behind us.”

With several prototypes finding trouble – both Tequila Patron ESM entries failed to finish the race, the No. 70 Mazda was sidelined early and the No. 31 Action Express Cadillac was felled by a wheel nut issue – Ricky and Jordan Taylor ended the day with a disappointing sixth-place finish behind Joao Barbosa, Christian Fittipaldi and Filipe Albuquerque.

“Obviously, it was a disappointing day,” Jordan Taylor said. “But I think from the lap 1 incident – it wasn’t Ricky’s fault going to the outside, he always makes moves at the start to make up positions. The 52 car had a moment and touched us, which caused the damage. From there, it was damage control.

“From then on it was running our own race and trying to make up laps when yellows came out. With strategy, we were able to get three of those back. With a few more yellows, we maybe could’ve made all of them back, which was a testament to the guys on the strategy side with saving fuel and timing our pit stops. So, from going from last to sixth due to other guys having reliability issues and making mistakes isn’t the worst day.”