After four podiums without a win, Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports’ Antonio Garcia and Alexander Sims finally drove the Velocity Yellow No. 3 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R to its first win of the season in Sunday’s Michelin GT Challenge at VIR.
Garcia and Sims’ victory helped them capture some much-needed breathing room in the IMSA WeatherTech GTD PRO championship race, as they stretched their lead out to 53 points over DragonSpeed’s Albert Costa.
The No. 3 Corvette took the lead during the first round of routine pit stops. Garcia was the first GTD PRO driver to pit for service, which eventually allowed Sims to enjoy an 8s advantage once all the other GTD PRO leaders made their first pit stops.
Sims pitted with just over an hour ago, and seconds after he entered the pits, a spectacular turbo failure on the No. 48 Paul Miller Racing BMW brought out a well-timed full course yellow, the second of the race. This allowed the two Pr att Miller Corvettes to cycle to the lead.
The race only went green for a lap before the No. 45 Wayne Taylor Racing Lamborghini spectacularly caught fire going into the Roller Coaster chicane. Danny Formal was not seriously injured as he vacated his burning Lamborghini, which spun off course as it ignited.
Formal was treated and released from the VIR care center.
Eventually, the final restart came with 28 minutes to go. Costa overtook the No. 4 Corvette of Tommy Milner for second place with about 20 minutes to go, then caught race leader Sims with a string of fast laps.
Sims held his nerve and took the win by 1.5s ahead of Costa.
Milner held onto third, just ahead of the No. 64 Ford Multimatic Motorsports Mustang GT3 (Mike Rockenfeller/Sebastian Priaulx) in fourth, and the No. 77 AO Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R (Laurin Heinrich/Klaus Bachler) in fifth.
Heinrich and Bachler held onto third in the GTD PRO standings (-191 points) with their top-five finish; they recovered from a drive-through penalty for avoidable contact, one of several penalties handed down as IMSA’s stewards and race director sought to clamp down on the aggressive driving seen throughout the race at Road America.
The No. 1 Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT3 EVO (Madison Snow/Neil Verhagen), after taking the lead on the first lap and leading throughout Verhagen’s opening stint, finished sixth after Snow was caught out by the timing of the second FCY.
Ford’s No. 65 Multimatic Mustang, the No. 14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3 and the No. 9 Pfaff Motorsports Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVO2 rounded out the nine GTD PRO cars that finished the race.
While the GTD PRO winners got some much-needed breathing room, Winward Racing’s Russell Ward and Philip Ellis put one hand on the championship as they drove to their third win of the season.
The strength of the undercut strategy, and the driving of Ward and Ellis, helped the No. 57 Mercedes-Benz AMG GT3 recover from being boxed out by the two Vasser Sullivan Racing Lexus’ on the opening lap.
Ellis spent most of the race fighting off the No. 78 Forte Racing Lamborghini of Mario Farnbacher for the race lead, but on the final lap Farnbacher was handed a drive-through penalty for blocking – Farnbacher and Misha Goikhberg dropped to 12th in class at the checkered flag after the drive-through was converted into a post-race time penalty.
It allowed the No. 021 Triarsi Competizione Ferrari 296 GT3 of Onofrio Triarsi and Kenton Koch to move up to second place in GTD.
Koch came back from an early drive-through penalty, punctuated by going from fifth to third on the penultimate restart, then putting Farnbacher under pressure for second place in the closing laps.
