Cadillac crew takes Petit victory as leading rivals clash late on
PETIT LE MANS IMSA SPORTSCAR ROAD ATLANTA (USA) 17 OCTOBER ROUND 9/11
Wayne Taylor Racing scored its third Petit Le Mans win in seven years in a remarkable race in which the regular line-up of Renger van der Zande and Ryan Briscoe, assisted by five-time Indycar champion Scott Dixon, pounced on a late-race collision between the leaders to swoop past for victory.
The latest triumph came despite the adversity of a couple of off-course excursions for Briscoe and a failing alternator causing the Cadillac DPI-V.R’S battery to die while van der Zande was at the wheel, during the antepenultimate round of the 2020 IMSA Sportscar season.
Although the turbocharged Acura Team Penske ARX-05S and Mazda RT24-PS appeared faster than the normally aspirated Cadillacs in practice and qualifying around the 2.54-mile course, the pace variation reduced on race day. And while the Action Express Racing Cadillac of Pipo Derani, Felipe Nasr and ‘extra’ Filipe Albuquerque was the Caddy competing most strongly with the Japanese brands for the majority of the race, the WTR team looked increasingly impressive as sunset turned to darkness.
All three drivers worked hard to save fuel and regularly went one-to-three laps longer on a stint than the Acuras, Mazdas and other Cadillacs. Yet despite the necessarily reduced pace, the car remained in the top five, and gained on its rivals as temperatures dropped and night fell. Dixon closed to within six seconds of the lead in his final stint, pressuring the leading AXR Cadillac at that point driven by Nasr, and the #7 Acura raced by fellow Indycar ace Alexander Rossi.
On taking over the black Caddy, Briscoe suffered a trip through the gravel at Turn 10 but then whittled away the deficit, before handing over to van der Zande, who continued this work until he was just 10s behind the two lead cars, by then driven by Derani and Ricky Taylor. When those two collided and went off at Turn 6, van der Zande grabbed the lead. After the full-course caution, van der Zande retained first at the penultimate restart, ahead of the recovering Acura of Taylor, Helio Castroneves and Rossi, as well as the other Acura of Dane Cameron, Juan Pablo Montoya and Simon Pagenaud, and when two GT cars clashed, the race finished under caution.
It was the #6 Acura of pole-winner Cameron, Montoya and Pagenaud that dominated the first half of the race. But Cameron was involved in a collision with the #77 Mazda of Oliver Jarvis, bouncing off the Gtd-winning Ferrari of Alessandro Balzan and into a wall. Cameron pitted for repairs but an off-sequence strategy didn’t
quite get the car back into a position of prominence and so the defending series champions claimed third place behind the Taylor/castroneves/rossi sister car.
In GT Le Mans, Antonio Garcia turned in one of the greatest laps of his career to grab pole, but the #3 Chevrolet Corvette C8.R faced strong opposition from the #24 BMW M8 of Jesse Krohn, John Edwards and Augusto Farfus, the second Corvette and both Porsche 911 RSRS.
The apparently superior straightline speed of the BMWS meant Farfus led into the closing stages, but a trip off course at the final corner sent the M8 into the pits to have debris removed from its intakes and left-front wheel. This allowed the #911 Porsche of Fred Makowiecki, Nick Tandy and Matt Campbell to take the win ahead of Garcia, Jordan Taylor and Nicky Catsburg, who extended the full-timers’ championship lead over team-mates Tommy Milner and Oliver Gavin, who shared their fourthplaced Corvette with Marcel Fassler.
Of the 13 GT Daytona entries, eight looked to have winning pace, despite the diversity of Pro and Am drivers, and these potential victors came from five of the class’s nine manufacturers. Ultimately, Jeff Westphal, Balzan and Cooper Macneil conquered in the Scuderia Corsa Ferrari 488 GT3. Westphal made the decisive pass for the lead on Jack Hawksworth’s #14 Lexus RC F at Turn 10 with an hour to go.