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. He later posted on social media that he had left the hospital with no injuries.
The crash caused the race’s 11th caution, and Race Control reviewed the collision but took no action despite Albuquerque having his nose in front from Derani’s onboard.
Source: Autosport