BMW teams endured bad weather and other challenges to get a win and some podium finishes in the GT World Challenge America and GT America races at Road America.
GT World Challenge America
There wasn’t much green flag racing in race one of the GT World Challenge America championship. It was a wet race and there was a big wreck with a long caution period about twenty minutes in. Kenton Koch moved into second place in the Pro class on the restart in the #99 Random Vandals Racing M4 GT3 EVO, and the race was then red-flagged due to lightning in the area with 48 minutes left and never restarted. Koch and teammate Connor De Phillippi (shown above) ended up as winners in the Pro class, with teammates Varun Choksey and Bill Auberlen in second.
The Turner Motorsport #29 M4 GT3 EVO of Robby Foley and Justin Rothberg initially finished second in the Pro-Am class but was relegated to seventh place after a five-second time penalty was accessed post-race. The penalty is due to Rothberg’s driver rating. He’s classified as a Silver-rated driver by the FIA but is essentially competing as a Bronze-rated driver in SRO, with added weight and time penalties added to the car to not give them too much of an advantage against other drivers.
Race two on Sunday turned out to be dry and in favorable conditions. The Random Vandals Racing M4 GT3 EVOs were running in seventh and eighth overall before pitting but were significantly racier in the second half. Kenton Koch took over from De Phillippi in the #99 car and got into third in class and overall, followed by Choksey in the #51 car. A caution with less than seven minutes left brought the cars closer together, and Koch got by the second place Porsche on the final lap to take second place, which was important in the championship. Choksey and Auberlen finished fourth.
Turner Motorsport overcame some penalties to finish second in Pro-Am in race two.
In Pro-Am, Robby Foley put in a great drive in his stint to open up a gap to third place, which was important since they would be given the five-second penalty as added time in the pits. The Turner team put in a great pit stop to get Rothberg out in the minimum amount of time, and he held on to second place in the Pro-Am class despite pressure in the closing laps.
With three races left, Kenton Koch and Connor De Phillippi are in the points lead in the Pro class, but the battle has become very tight, as Mercedes-AMG drivers Micai Stephens and Mikhail Grenier are just eighteen points behind, and Porsche drivers Jan Heylen and Alex Sedgwick are just five points further back in third. Robby Foley and Justin Rothberg continue to lead the Pro-Am class points.
GT America
In the GT America sprint race series, Justin Rothberg came into the weekend with the points lead in the championship. He also left Road America with the points lead, though it proved to be a challenging weekend.
Race one on Saturday turned out to be a very wet one, with the race starting behind the safety car due to the significant amount of water that was on the track. Rothberg started last because of the five-place grid penalty for his driver rating (GT America has no pit stops to add five seconds to, so Rothberg was given a grid penalty for his driver rating), but he worked his way up into third within a couple of green flag laps. He got into second after the race was restarted after a caution, but then caused the next caution – losing control of the #29 M4 GT3 EVO and smacking the wall hard. Rothberg was OK, but the crash did significant damage to the car, forcing Turner Motorsport to use a spare car that hadn’t yet turned a wheel for race two on Sunday.
In race two, Rothberg once again started from the back in the untested spare car, though the series did allow the team a “hardship lap” earlier that day to see if everything was working correctly. There were only five cars in the field on Sunday, since two others were not racing after damage the previous day. Rothberg moved up into second quickly on the first lap, after two cars in front of him got together and both went off the track. He was later passed for second by Memo Gidley in an Audi, who was one of the cars that went off earlier. Rothberg finished third but stayed ahead of Porsche driver Kyle Washington in the points, after Washington was forced to retire.
The next races for both GT World Challenge America and GT America are at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama on September 5th-7th, followed by the finale at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on October 16th-19th.
—David Haueter
[Photos courtesy SRO]
