The SRO GT4 America series held the penultimate race weekend of their season at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama, and BMW teams racing the M4 GT4 EVO asserted their competitiveness in the series with multiple podium finishes among the three classes (Silver, Pro-Am, Am), including four wins. There were actually three races at Barber instead of the usual two, as the first race of the weekend on Friday was a makeup for a race that was canceled at Road America back in August due to bad weather.
The Random Vandals Racing team had two wins and an additional podium finish in that makeup race, with Kenton Koch and Kevin Boehm winning the Silver class in their #97 M4 GT4 EVO, Josh Green and Sam Craven finishing second in Pro-Am in their #94 car, and Paul Sparta and Darius Trinka winning the Am class in the #98 BMW (shown in top photo). The #82 BimmerWorld Racing BMW of James Walker, Jr. and Tyler McQuarrie finished on the podium in third in Pro-Am.
Kenton Koch and Kevin Boehm won the Silver class in two of three races at Barber.
There was a lot of action in the Am class in that first race among the BMW entries, with Judson Holt (Fast Track Racing), James Clay (BimmerWorld) and Laura Hayes (Thunder Bunny Racing) running nose to tail and battling for position. Clay got into the back of Holt at one point, which pushed Holt off the track, which got Clay and teammate Charlie Postins a penalty, and the #606 BMW of Laura Hayes and Allen Patten was later given a penalty for contact with the #36 car of Clay and Postins. The #98 of Sparta and Trinka were there to take advantage of those snafus to take the win, with Clay/Postins finishing second and Hayes/Patten third.
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- Josh Green and Sam Craven finished second in Pro-Am in two races.
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- Tyler McQuarrie and James Walker Jr. finished third in Pro-Am in two races.
In race two, or the first-round scoring points at Barber Motorsports Park, some of the best racing action of the year in any series took place between Kenton Koch in the #97 Random Vandals M4 GT4 EVO and Tyler Gonzalez in the #68 Toyota Supra GT4 EVO2, as they battled for third position in the Silver class, and both eventually caught up to the Aston Martins that were running one-two in the class. The two went hard at it for several laps, running nose to tail and fender to fender, with Koch eventually taking the lead and the class win. “This car was just a rocketship in the end,” said Koch. “All year we’ve had a really good car, and now we’re this much closer to the championship.”
James Clay and Charlie Postins are leading the Am class championship.
The #94 Random Vandals BMW of Green and Craven and the #82 BimmerWorld BMW of McQuarrie and Walker Jr. finished second and third in the Pro-Am class for the second straight race. In the Am class, the #98 BMW of Paul Sparta and Darius Trinka initially took the win but was found to have an incorrect ECU setting on their BMW, which dropped them to last in class. That demotion moved the #36 BMW of Clay and Postins to second in class, followed by the #606 BMW of Hayes and Patten in third.
Going into the third and final race at Barber, Koch, and Boehm had the opportunity to clinch the Silver class championship for Random Vandals Racing by scoring a fourth-place finish or higher. However, an accident with a spinning Toyota Supra took them out of the race when it pushed in their left front fender, which damaged the radiator and was rubbing against the tire. The #94 Random Vandals BMW of Green and Craven finished third in the Pro-Am class. In the Am class, the #606 Thunder Bunny Racing M4 GT4 EVO of Laura Hayes and Allen Patten took the win in the Am class, which was their first in the car after switching from Toyota to BMW earlier this season. James Clay and Charlie Postins finished second in Am.
Thunder Bunny Racing took their first Am class win in the #606 BMW in the last race at Barber.
The final two rounds of the GT4 America championship will take place at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on the weekend of October 16th-19th. Kenton Koch and Kevin Boehm have the Silver class championship all but wrapped up. In Pro-Am, the Random Vandals duo of Josh Green and Sam Craven and the BimmerWorld duo of James Walker, Jr. and Tyler McQuarrie are in the championship hunt, and BimmerWorld drivers James Clay and Charlie Postins have a good lead in the Am class points.
—David Haueter
[Photos courtesy SRO]
