ALTON, Va. – Jacob Ruud completed a weekend sweep of the TC America features at Virginia Int’l Raceway with his second-straight victory Sunday afternoon in the No. 81 Classic BMW entry.
Ruud started from the pole was able to quickly drive to a three second lead ahead of his closest rival, with Austen Smith and the No. 51 Auto Technic BMW running at the front of the TC field and Caleb Bacon leading in TCA aboard the No. 18 Forbush Performance Hyundai.
After 10 minutes the top-four in TCA started to separate themselves from the rest of the field, with Carter Fartuch second, Luke Rumberg third and Michael Carter fourth. With 28 minutes remaining Rumberg would get a run on Fartuch and make the pass for second in class at turn one.
Rumberg would quickly close on the back of his teammate Bacon and force the No. 18 to make a mistake and fall to fifth in class, giving the lead to Rumberg. Bacon would recover one position by passing P.J. Groenke’s No. 25 Toyota coming out of the final turn called Hog Pen.
With 23 minutes remaining a full course caution was called as the No. 61 Mini of Derek Jones and Groenke’s No. 25 would come together going into the braking zone for turns 13 and 14, causing massive damage to the Mini as he hit the inside tire barriers. A red flag would be called due to repairs needed to the guardrail, with the checkered flag being shown at the same time.
The TCX victory would go to Ruud, his sixth in six races, with Steve Streimer and the No. 30 Hard Motorsports BMW second and Samantha Tan and the No. 438 ST Racing BMW third.
Smith would grab his second win of the weekend in TC with Tom Capizzi’s No. 52 Auto Technic BMW and Rob Hines No. 21 TechSport Nissan third.
Rumberg brought the TCA victory home in the No. 33 Forbush Performance Hyundai with Fartuch’s No. 16 Honda second and the No. 22 Toyota of Michael Carter third.