When it rains, Castroneves is able to pour it on
He teams with Ricky Taylor to get needed win
ELKHART LAKE – First came humidity, turning a glorious day sticky for 62 drivers, 31 crews and a sizeable crowd.
Then a downpour. Some lightning, too, and while not at the track, it was close enough for concern.
And then another downpour. Sunday afternoon turned ugly for racing and uglier for spectating as Road America morphed into Elkhart River, a slick 4.048-mile thrill ride through the Kettle Moraine forest, for the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
But it was a fabulous day for winning. Just ask Helio Castroneves, who hadn’t been to victory lane anywhere for two years, and the Taylor brothers, who never managed to win at Road America as teammates but did so with different teams in separate classes Sunday.
“I couldn’t see a thing but I noticed a little gap and every time you see a little gap when it’s a few laps to go, you go for it,” said Castroneves, who made the winning pass with three laps to go when Regner van der Zande slipped wide in Turn 14.
“When I took the lead I was like, OK, nice and easy.”
Ricky Taylor started the No. 7 Team Penske Acura from the pole and had his hands full with the two Mazda entries
through his stint. Oliver Jarvis in the No. 77 Mazda passed Castroneves with about an hour to go.
Shorty thereafter the weather began to change, and drivers tiptoed for a while. A caution and subsequent red flag disrupted the flow before the race restarted with 71⁄2 minutes to go and finished under the yellow again after two GT Le Mans-class drivers crashed. By then, Castroneves’ lap time had slowed by 20 seconds.
“It was getting worse, especially on the back straight it was getting really bad,” said Castroneves, a three-time Indianapolis 500 winner. “Basically a river running on the back straight. Basically you’re just a passenger.
“But woooooh, my man and I made it happen. There was a long stretch without a victory.”
Despite all the trouble, drivers were able to complete more than 1 hour 55 minutes of the race, scheduled for 2:40, under the green flag.
The win was Castroneves’ third in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and Taylor’s 21st. Given that
Team Penske’s factory-backed Acura program will end with this season, their chances to win more together are running out.
Taylor and his younger brother, Jordan, never managed to win at Road America as teammates at Wayne Taylor Racing, owned by their father, but both picked up checkered flags Sunday. In another family twist, Ricky’s victory came at the expense of Wayne, who owns the car van de Zande drives.
Jordan and Garcia picked up their second GT Le Mans victory of the season and Corvette Racing’s third straight, while the sister car of Oliver Gavin and Tommy Milner finished second in class.
Both Corvettes benefited when the leading BMW of John Edwards went off in the Kink, a high-speed, right-hand bend where water had begun to accumulate, and the third-place Porsche of Nick Tandy followed.
“The first thing was to go by a couple of LMP2s while fighting Tandy and trying to catch up on (Edwards), so it was a very, very intense three laps,” Garcia said. “We had many, many times where we were alongside and kind of sailing instead of racing together.”
The LMP2 race took its strange turn in the first downpour. Patrick Kelly dominated early but when his PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports teammate Simon Trummer tangled with another car and a trackside advertising banner, they opened the door for DragonSpeed drivers Henrik Hedman and Ben Hanley.
In GT Daytona, AIM Vasser Sullivan Lexus driver Townsend Bell got by Mario Farnbacher for the lead when Farnbacher went off onto the grass in the Kink momentarily on the second-last lap.
“The worst part was after the checkered flag, I actually crashed the car in the final corner at about 20 miles an hour into a concrete wall,” Bell said.
“If that would have happened a lap earlier, we would have lost the race under caution at 20 miles an hour.”