BRASELTON, Ga. — Tom Blomqvist woke up Saturday with a feeling he couldn’t shake, a premonition about how the rest of his day would play out.
“I just had this sort of feeling that we were going to win the thing,” he said. “I don’t really know why.”
Good instincts.
Blomqvist, Oliver Jarvis and Helio Castroneves combined to win the 25th annual Motul Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta to claim the Daytona Prototype international (DPi) class championship in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season finale.
Not a bad outcome for a team that didn’t rejoin the WeatherTech Championship’s top class until last year, and at times in 2021, struggled to sort out its Acura ARX-05 and make it perform more consistently.
This year, consistency was the hallmark of Meyer Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian. Its No. 60 car finished outside the podium just three times in 10 races. During one stretch, Blomqvist and Jarvis finished second five consecutive times. Frustrating, no doubt, but those five runner-up finishes set the foundation for a championship.
Fitting, then, that MSR’s performance in the 10-hour season finale was a masterful yet consistent work of art.
“We were faultless, flawless,” Blomqvist said. “The guys in the pits and the engineers with the strategy — all year long we’ve been pretty consistent. It’s just fantastic.”
They weren’t the only ones who impressed. So did the other team battling for the championship. The all-Acura duel between MSR and Wayne Taylor Racing came down to the final minutes and a close battle between the No. 60 and the No. 10 Konica Minolta Acura ARX-05 driven by Ricky Taylor, Filipe Albuquerque and Brendon Hartley.
The drama reached its zenith when Albuquerque tried to pass Blomqvist heading into turn one with 14 minutes remaining. As the chase moved up the hill into turn two, the No. 10 made contact with a lapped GT car.
Resulting rear suspension damage ended the pursuit.
“I’m simply devastated with the ending,” Albuquerque said. “It was a bit inglorious to finish like that. So competitive and tight fun today, but it is what it is.”
Albuquerque also apologized publicly on Twitter, where his teammate praised him in response.
“You drive like a hero,” Taylor tweeted.
Taylor wasn’t the only one commending the effort by the No. 10 group. Jarvis took a moment during the post-race press conference to acknowledge WTR’s effort before praising the decisions of his own crew, including strategist Ryan McCarthy and performance director Vincent Forges.
“These are stressful situations,” Jarvis said. “You’ve got myself and Tom and Helio and about 20 other people having an opinion. They managed to take that all in and really soak it up and stay extremely calm when some of us weren’t.”