DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Thanks to the efforts of Renger van der Zande, Nick Yelloly and their teammates, the No. 93 Acura Meyer Shank Racing w/Curb Agajanian well and truly put the Acura in the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach.
The No. 93 car claimed the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship Grand Touring Prototype win, putting smiles on the faces of all the Acura and Honda Racing Corporation folks from nearby Santa Clarita and Torrance.
Meanwhile, Aaron Telitz, Benjamin Pedersen and their teammates at Vasser Sullivan Racing made Saturday a great day for Lexus, Toyota and Gazoo Racing with its Grand Touring Daytona victory in the No. 12 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3. The win for Lexus came at a venue where Toyota has historical lineage and used to sponsor the race.
• Although nothing beats winning, a couple of other drivers and teams departed the track on Saturday evening with heads held high, none more so than Robert Wickens, Mason Filippi and DXDT Racing.
Despite this being his first time back at the hand-controls of the DXDT Racing Corvette Z06 GT3.R since August’s Michelin GT Challenge at Virginia International Raceway, Wickens planted the No. 36 ‘Vette on the pole, his first pole position since joining the GTD ranks at this very event a year ago. The Canadian proceeded to back-up his performance by showing a clean pair of heels to the GTD field in the opening stint of the race, leading by as much as four seconds before executing a flawless driver swap with Filippi on Lap 28 in their one and only pit stop of the race.
“To be honest, that was a fairy tale stint,” Wickens said. “The Corvette Z06 GT3.R was just so nice to drive around the track. Every lap was a dream. It was a good stint and a little fortunate with Danny Formal having a mechanical problem and then I don’t know what happened . . . but suddenly we had quite a decent amount of space behind.”
Delighted as he was by winning the pole and gapping the field in his stint at the wheel, the partially paralyzed Wickens was equally pleased by the team’s cracker-jack pit stop, which saw DXDT’s Josh Gibbs assist him exiting the car and Filippi take his place without a hitch.
“We were a little nervous for our driver change if we would lose time or at least maintain the status quo,” Wickens explained. “So the goal was for me to build a gap just in case. Mason did an amazing job and I found out we had the fifth fastest time in the pit lane. I’ll take that all day.”
Although the DXDT Corvette eventually emerged from the pit stop shuffle in second spot, Filippi was destined to get tangled-up with a GTP car on a restart. After an ensuing brush with the wall, he was “freight-trained” down the order by a handful of opportunistic GTD competitors. Unable to make up ground the remainder of the race, Filippi ultimately brought the DXDT entry home an unrepresentative sixth place.
• Another combination taking aim for the front is Laurin Heinrich, Tijmen van der Helm, JDC-Miller MotorSports and their No. 5 Mustang Sampling Porsche 963. After teaming with Felipe Nasr and Julien Andlauer to pilot the No. 7 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963 to overall wins in the Rolex 24 At Daytona and the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, Heinrich joined JDC-Miller for most of the rest of the season. He wasted little time in making his presence known, hustling the Mustang Sampling Porsche to the very top of the time sheets in Friday’s opening practice session.
After van der Helm qualified the JDC-Miller entry in 10th spot, the team rolled the dice on an early full course caution, losing one spot by pitting for a driver change, but having Heinrich in the car for the remainder of the race in the bargain. The German duly worked his way up to P7 before gaining another spot following an intense scrap with Philipp Eng in the No. 25 BMW M Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8 and going on to finish in sixth spot. Posting the fastest lap of the race (1:12.918) underlined his strong debut performance.
“It was a pretty solid race,” Heinrich said. “We came from the back and with the nature of the race being so short you only have one (scheduled) pit stop so you have limited options. We tried to make something work and in the end I think we did a good job. If somebody had told us before the race that we would finish sixth we would have taken it.
“Personally for me, my first weekend with JDC-Miller MotorSports . . . this is not the end. We are just getting started. I think we had good pace for going ahead to the next race. Overall, I’m quite happy with the weekend. Obviously in hindsight there are things you would do quite differently, but I think we made the most of our opportunities and now we can look forward to Monterey. Our goal is to be at the front and, over the weekend we have shown the possibility and capability of being there.”
• Porsche Penske Motorsport still holds solid leads in the GTP manufacturer, team and driver’s standings leaving Long Beach. But GTD flipped considerably in its shortest race of the year.
The points-leading No. 27 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo saw a potential podium run foiled by a pit road speeding penalty.
The big winners, not only on the racetrack, but also in the standings were Vasser Sullivan, Telitz and Pedersen along with Patrick Gallagher and Robby Foley who finished second in the No. 96 Turner Motorsport BMW M4 GT3 EVO.
While Eduardo “Dudu” Barrichello and Heart of Racing remain atop the driver and team standings with 930 points, Gallagher, Foley and Turner have narrowed the gap to 54 points behind (876) with Telitz, Pedersen and Vasser Sullivan in third at 827 points.
