Paul Miller Racing’s Madison Snow was able to take the overall lead from The Heart of Racing’s Ross Gunn on the final round of pit stops Sunday (Aug. 25). From there, Snow held on to win the Michelin GT Challenge at VIR with teammate Bryan Sellers. It is their first win together in the GTD Pro class.
“It’s an overall win in GT at VIR. It’s pretty spectacular,” Snow told NBC Sports’ Matt Yocum in victory lane. “It’s going to take a while to sink in, but I’m glad that I was able to do it with my best friend Bryan [Sellers].”
Sellers and Snow’s margin of victory was 3.368 seconds over Ford Multimatic Motorsports’ Mike Rockenfeller and Harry Tincknell. Gunn and Alex Riberas were third, then Joey Hand and Dirk Mueller in the second factory Mustang. Korthoff/Preston Motorsports’ Mikael Grenier and Kenton Koch were fifth.
0The first four finishers were the top-four finishers in the GTD Pro class. Fifth in GTD Pro went to Pfaff Motorsports’ Oliver Jarvis and Marvin Kirchhoefer.
Snow started from the overall pole in his BMW and managed to open a small gap. Meanwhile, Tincknell snuck around Antonio Garcia in the first turn to take second.
For almost the entire first stint of the race, Tincknell was within a second of Snow, stalking his every move. Hand was also able to move past the Corvettes and up into third.
When the first round of stops began roughly 50 minutes into the race, a quicker pit stop for the No. 65 team allowed Mueller to jump over Rockenfeller. Unfortunately, the stop was too quick as Mueller was hit with a drive-through penalty for failing to adhere to the minimum refueling time.
Snow went for nearly a full hour before making his first pit stop in order to hand over to Sellers. The stop put Sellers out directly in front of Rockenfeller.
Meanwhile, Riberas stopped 12 laps before Snow. Quick laps from Gunn once he got in the car resulted in Gunn emerging from the sequence with a 10-second lead.
The sequence also saw some potential contenders eliminated or simply curtailed. For instance, Vasser Sullivan’s No. 14 team really didn’t have that great of a weekend at VIR. Jack Hawksworth didn’t qualify all that well and ran down the order in class early on.
Right after his first pit stop, AO Racing’s Laurin Heinrich made an aggressive move at turn 4 for position. Contact was made and Hawksworth went around.
Heinrich, the GTD Pro points leader entering Sunday, was given a drive-through penalty for the contact. Hawksworth was able to continue with a time loss.
Things were much worse for Corvette Racing with Pratt Miller Motorsports. Alexander Sims stopped the No. 3 Corvette on the backstretch, seemingly with no power. He was able to do a reset and get the car restarted, but he had no power steering. That eventually forced the No. 3 to go behind the wall for repairs.
They would return, then break a piece of the suspension later on and take a second trip to the paddock. Garcia and Sims would still finish the race, 29 laps down and the last car still running.
With a little more than an hour to go, the final round of pit stops began. Gunn stopped first and brought a number of the GTD Pro contenders with him. However, since he got in the car so much earlier than the other leaders, Gunn had to take more fuel.
As a result, the 12-lap fuel advantage that Paul Miller Racing had meant that Sellers was able to pit, get tires and fuel, switch back to Snow and still beat Gunn out of the pits.
Snow opened up a lead of nearly 20 seconds over Rockenfeller before Inception Racing’s Frederik Schandorff suffered a substantial engine failure in the Climbing Esses. That brought out the race’s one and only caution with 33 minutes to go.
Once the race restarted, Snow was able to slowly pull away from Rockenfeller. From there, he just had to hold on to take the win.
With AO Racing’s Heinrich and Klaus Bachler finishing seventh in GTD Pro, it means that Heinrich’s point lead is down to 17 points over Gunn and Riberas. With a perfect score of 385 points for the weekend, Snow and Sellers are now 111 points back and within striking distance with two races to go.
In GTD, Proton Competition’s Giammarco Levorato started from pole, but did not keep the advantage for long. It took only a couple of turns for Koch to take over the class lead. Wright Motorsports’ Elliott Skeer followed past into third.
Skeer attempted to pressure Koch for the class lead, but then dropped a wheel exiting turn 10. That resulted in him going off at the next turn and dropping to fourth. Later on, Levorato had a similar off-course excursion later on that dropped him to fifth.
Those issues elevated The Heart of Racing’s Zacharie Robichon up to second, three seconds back of Koch.
Issues through the field allowed Koch to get up to as high as fourth overall after the first round of stops. However, he was still losing ground to Robichon.
The final stops saw Mikael Grenier take over for Koch. He was able to maintain a small gap over Roman DeAngelis in the No. 27 Aston Martin.
The caution allowed for DeAngelis to close up on Grenier, but the GTD Pro McLaren of Oliver Jarvis was in between the two GTD leaders. Further back, Corey Lewis had an off-course excursion at the Oak Tree turn, dropping him down from third to fifth. A second trip to the grass dropped him even more, ruining an excellent day.
In the closing laps, the man on the movie was Forte Racing’s Loris Spinelli. He was able to drive up to third and set the fastest lap of the race, regardless of class, in the process.
Ultimately, Spinelli ran out of time as Grenier was able to hold off DeAngelis to take the win. It is the first-ever class victory for Korthoff/Preston Motorsports.
Grenier and Koch’s margin of victory was .897 seconds over DeAngelis and Robichon. Spinelli and Misha Goikhberg were third, then Winward Racing’s Philip Ellis and Russell Ward. Turner Motorsport’s Robby Foley and Patrick Gallagher were fifth.
IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship Michelin GT Challenge at VIR Unofficial Results
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Phil Allaway has three primary roles at Frontstretch. He's the manager of the site's FREE e-mail newsletter that publishes Monday-Friday and occasionally on weekends. He keeps TV broadcasters honest with weekly editions of Couch Potato Tuesday and serves as the site's Sports Car racing editor.
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