Yesterday’s Sahlins six hour of the Glen at the Watkins Glen International circuit in upstate New York certainly proved itself to be a messy affair where both driving standards and methods employed by Race Control will need looking at moving forward.
This time featuring the full suite of classes from the GTP, LMP2 and the two GTD classes meant for a grid size of fifty-four cars circulating around what is in places, a very tight ‘old school’ circuit.
Whilst the headlining GTP class was able to set their grid through conventional fastest lap means, the GTD class had to resort to a starting order according to points position within the class after their session was red flagged by an incident on track without the ability of seeing out that session because of previous delays within the race programme.
That meant that Ross Gunn had set a time worthy of a P9 start within the #23 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Valkyrie that he shares with Roman De Angelis, but it would again be the Canadian who would be taking the start to the race on Sunday. Across the garage, the #27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Racing Vantage GTD of Zacharie Robichon, Tom Gamble and championship leading Eduardo Barrichello would start from pole position in class (despite setting only the second fastest lap of the session before the red flag) with the rebranded and relaunched #68 YRB Racing Car Blanche entry of Valentin Hasse-Clot, Marrius Fossard and Trenton Estep claiming a P9 start in their first IMSA race since swapping over from Van Der Steur Racing.
Being an endurance round, we also welcomed back the #44 Magnus Racing AMR of John Potter, Spencer Pumpelly and Mario Farnbacher as all three drivers celebrated a racing milestone within the series with a P19 start.
Unfortunately and just forty-five minutes into the race, things went sour for the Heart of Racing team as the #23 Valkyrie was exiting pit lane after service and was apparently passing the GTD class for the class split during an ongoing Safety Car period, that the pack ahead suddenly stopped leaving the #23 nowhere to go others than into the rear of two other cars. That was their race done on the spot with two GTP’s and one GTD car all suffering terminal damage but most importantly – all drivers were OK.
Several needless incidents later and having just passed halfway on the race clock, another green flag first lap after another safety car period saw a GTD Pro car make contact with a GTD car to spun both of them out which in the chaos of the situation unravelling before them saw other cars collect those cars on the way through – one of them the #44 Magnus Racing AMR. That incident saw a further four cars taken out of the race!
There was eventually some good times to record however, as whilst the pole setting #27 HoRT AMR GTD fall back down the order, we did see the #68 Car Blanche entry come through at the end with Hasse-Clot behind the wheel as he secured his new race colleagues their first taste of racing success with a P26 overall and P3 in class finish at the end. The #27 car would eventually finish P5 in class which is still enough for the Brazilian to maintain his GTD Championship lead in the overall standings as the GTD’s now look to Canada for their next round in three weeks’ time.
Photo credits – Teams / social media