Meyer Shank Racing’s Tom Blomqvist, Colin Braun and Helio Castroneves won the race at Road Atlanta, in the team’s final GTP event with Acura, as Action Express Racing’s Cadillac V-Series.R of Derani and Alexander Sims scooped the GTP championship, aided by Jack Aitken.
Ten hours earlier, Acura’s Louis Deletraz led the 54-car field to the green around the undulating 2.54-mile road course in Georgia, but Sebastien Bourdais took little time in taking the lead, sweeping his Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac around the outside of the Wayne Taylor Racing ARX-06 at Turn 1.
After a series of yellow flags, the first coming in just the third minute, a hugely significant moment occurred in Hour 2, when a multi-car crash on the approach to the downhill Turn 10 chicane saw Porsche’s title contender Nick Tandy taken out following a clash between the #20 High Class Racing LMP2 car of Dennis Andersen and the #023 Triarsi Ferrari GTD of Charles Scardina, a shunt that also involved the #70 Inception McLaren GTD entry of Brendan Iribe.
The #6 car returned to the race many laps down, but Laurens Vanthoor suffered another crash at the Esses in hour seven, which damaged the car even more.
That narrowed the field of title contenders, and the pendulum swung towards Acura when Albuquerque passed Aitken with two hours remaining to snatch the points lead, only for Aitken to grab it back just 15 minutes later when Albuquerque tripped over an LMP2 car.
The truly controversial moment came with just over an hour to go, as Albuquerque got a run on Derani towards Turn 1 and made his move around the outside, but he found Derani in no mood to give him any space, and Albuquerque got shoved onto the exit kerb and plunged head-on at high speed into the tyrewall.
Albuquerque was in audible pain via the onboard camera and he had to be helped to the AMR Safety Team’s vehicle to be taken to the medical center and then on to hospital. The crash caused the race’s 11th caution, and Race Control reviewed the collision but took no action despite Albuquerque clearly having his nose in front from Derani’s onboard.
The other Acura, of Meyer Shank Racing, was delayed at the start of the third hour, when Tom Blomqvist was right on Deletraz’s tail in the lead battle but was sent into the pits for suspension repairs after being hit by the #1 BMW GTD car at the exit of the chicane.
But Blomqvist’s team-mate Braun grabbed the lead from van der Zande straight after the penultimate restart. Van der Zande had stayed out during the yellow for the Albuquerque crash with 40mins to go, and although he dropped back by 3s to save fuel, he closed right up before the final sequence of yellows that effectively ended the race prematurely.
The 10-hour race came down to a 5m30s restart, with Braun leading van der Zande, Harry Tincknell (Proton Porsche) and Matt Campbell in the works Penske-run 963, but Jan Heylen’s GTD class Porsche erupted in flames after a multi-car collision before the green flag to end the season.
Derani finished sixth to claim the title but only after a light touch late on with the other title contender, the #25 BMW of Connor De Phillippi, Nick Yelloly and Sheldon van der Linde. They had previous clashed hours earlier when van der Linde hit Sims as they both ran a red light at the end of the pitlane.
Jenson Button finished fifth on his IMSA debut with JDC Miller MotorSport’s Porsche 963, along with Mike Rockenfeller and Tijmen van der Helm.
Source: Autosport