DXDT Racing’s Alec Udell and Tommy Milner held off a charging Kenton Koch late to win Fanatec GT World Challenge America powered by AWS Race No. 1 at Barber Motorsports Park Saturday (Sept. 7). It is Udell and Milner’s sixth overall victory of the year and their seventh Pro class win in a row.
“[Koch] pushed me super hard for sure,” Milner told SRO America’s Amanda Busick after the race. “We knew that track position today was going to be big. We didn’t think that we had the fastest car, but we had the best car on tires at the end.
Milner and Udell’s margin of victory was 1.090 seconds over Koch and Conor Daly in the Random Vandals Racing BMW M4 GT3. Racers Edge Motorsports’ Luca Mars and Zach Veach were third in their Acura, then ST Racing’s Bill Auberlen and Varun Choksey. Wright Motorsports’ Adam Adelson and Elliott Skeer were fifth.
Udell started from pole in his Chevrolet and opened a small gap. Meanwhile, Turner Motorsport’s Justin Rothberg spun in turn 1 after contact from ST Racing’s Samantha Tan.
Tan actually drove into the grass, then came back on and clipped Rothberg. However, before that, Tan had moved out of line prior to the start-finish line.
As a result, she was given two drive-through penalties, one for the start violation and another for the contact. By the time she served her penalties, she was 71 seconds behind the leader in 15th overall.
Behind Udell, Daly and Auberlen fought for second in class. They dropped a couple of seconds behind Udell and Ellis early, but lapped traffic allowed them to get back in the mix for the overall lead.
When the mid-race pit stops began, Udell pitted relatively early to swap over to Milner. Meanwhile, Auberlen chose to run long.
When the sequence was complete, Milner emerged with the overall lead and a four-second advantage over Koch. However, Koch turned in some of the fastest laps of the race to cut into Milner’s advantage.
With 25 minutes to go, Koch was able to catch Milner. From here, the two drivers battled for the overall lead.
Catching the leader is one thing. Getting past is another. Koch tried his hardest, but just couldn’t get by.
In Pro-Am, Regulator Racing’s Philip Ellis started from pole in his Mercedes. Like most races, his goal was to leave everyone else in the class in his dust.
Ellis was able to move up to second overall and put five seconds on Bryson Morris in the opening laps. He ended up right behind Udell and fought him for the overall lead.
Ellis tried for more than half of his stint in the car to get past Udell, but couldn’t do so. Even in this circumstance, he was still able to pull away from Morris at a rate of nearly two seconds a lap.
When everyone stopped, Ellis went as long as he possibly could to maximize his gap back to the rest of the class. Burton ultimately exited the pits with a 43-second lead in class, but Bryan Sellers in the No. 64 Corvette was three seconds a lap faster than Burton.
Ultimately, the huge gap didn’t matter. Sellers not only had a pace advantage over Burton, but the Regulator Racing team released Burton just a couple of tenths of a second too early. If you’re under the 74-second minimum pit delta by up to a second, you’re given a post-race penalty that is decuple that amount.
Regulator Racing got Burton out two-tenths of a second too quickly. As a result, a two-second penalty was added post-race.
That meant that Sellers effectively took the lead with seven minutes to go. With four minutes left, he made the pass for the class lead on-track in turn 5. From there, Sellers pulled away to take the class win in sixth overall.
Tan and Neil Verhagen ended up seventh in class, resulting in a substantial shift in the points. Despite that, their advantage is still comfortable with two races to go.
Morris and Sellers’ margin of victory was 4.103 seconds over Rennsport One’s Trent Hindman and Jake Pedersen. Rothberg and Robby Foley were third, then Burton and Ellis. GMG Racing’s Tom Sargent and Kyle Washington were fifth.
Fanatec GT World Challenge America powered by AWS: Barber Park Race No. 1 Results
Race No. 2 for Fanatec GT World Challenge America powered by AWS at Barber Motorsports Park is scheduled to go green at 3:15 p.m. ET Sunday afternoon. The race will be streamed live on the GT World YouTube channel and on SpeedSport1.
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.
Outside of Frontstretch, Phil is the press officer for Lebanon Valley Speedway in West Lebanon, N.Y. He covers all the action on the high-banked dirt track from regular DIRTcar Modified racing to occasional visits from touring series such as the Super DIRTcar Series.