Ford prevailed in the top sports car class, GTLM (GT Le Mans). Richard Westbrook (England) and Ryan Briscoe (Australia) won in the no. 67 Ford Chip Ganassi Racing Ford GT which was built by Multimatic Motorsports based in Markham, Ontario. The two Corvettes finished second and third with Jan Magnussen (Denmark) and Antonio Garcia (Spain) in the No. 3 Corvette Racing Chevrolet Corvette C7.R and Tommy Milner (USA) and Oliver Gavin (England) in the no. 4 Corvette Racing Chevrolet Corvette C7.R respectively.
Jan Magnussen
Richard Westbrook
“I’m excited to be back in victory lane,” said Ben Keating. “It’s been over a year since we’ve had a win, so it’s nice to be back. We had a really good car today. We came out of the truck with this setup. We really hit it well.
“The Lexus was struggling a little more than I was,” said Jeroen Bleekemolen. “We were fighting and I got a little bit of a gap, and then we tried to keep it and just bring it home. (Marcelli) had a little slide going through Turn 9. I tried for Turn 10, I got inside of him there. He gave me the space, so I took it.”
Kyle Marcelli
“Of course, we’re competitors and we want to win and it’s a good thing when you’re upset with second,” said Kyle Marcelli. “We had a fast car, but we really struggled at the end of the stint with our rear tire and we knew that, so we did not need the yellows. I needed it to stay green.”
Nate Stacey (left) and Kyle Marcelli
Saturday’s race was the Canadian Tire Motorsport Park 120 in the IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge series. The 2-hour race was also held under beautiful sunny race conditions. The overall winners were the driving team of Kyle Marcelli (Canada) and Nate Stacy (USA) in their No. 60 Roush Performance / KohR Motorsports Ford Mustang GT4 in the GS (Grand Sport) class. Huntsville, Ontario driver Martin Barkey and co-driver Brett Sandberg (USA) in their No. 80 AWA Ford Mustang GT4 followed by Damien Faulkner (Ireland) and American Russell Ward in their No. 33 Winward Racing / HTP Motorsport Mercedes-AMG GT.
“For Compass Racing to win here at home, I think [Team Owner] Karl (Thompson) was super, super happy,” said Casey, Jr. “We have a lot of Canadians on the team, so coming into the weekend it was a home field advantage. There was a different vibe around the weekend for sure, coming in locally, so that was definitely an advantage on our part.”
Complete race results can be found at the IMSA website. The next race for both series takes place July 21st at Lime Rock Park which is about 80 kms north-west of Hartford, Connecticut. The Lime Rock Park 120 Continental Tire race starts at 11:10 a.m. and the WeatherTech Northeast Grand Prix starts at 3:10 p.m. local time.
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