Laguna Seca Podium Streak Comes to an End

A fourth consecutive podium and sixth in their team’s last seven visits to Laguna Seca Raceway near Monterey, California was just not meant to be for brothers and co-drivers Ricky and Jordan Taylor and the No. 10 Konica Minolta Corvette DP for Wayne Taylor Racing (WTR) during Sunday’s Continental Tire Monterey Grand Prix IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship event.

Ricky Taylor, who qualified fourth and held his position through the opening 30 minutes of today’s two-hour timed event, successfully made his way past third-place Christian Fittipaldi and the No. 5 Action Express Racing Corvette DP through turn nine of the iconic 2.238-mile, 11-turn road circuit. Before they could get to the next corner, Fittipaldi lost control and clipped Taylor in the rear, and both prototypes spun off track and got stuck in a gravel trap.

Recovery efforts by track workers cost Taylor two laps under caution. He returned to the pits for a quick cleanup of the car, fuel, tires, and a change of drivers. Jordan Taylor resumed in seventh place and was only able to salvage a sixth-place finish, two laps down to the race-winning No. 60 Michael Shank Racing Honda of Oz Negri and John Pew.

“It’s hard to pass around here, so I finally was able to get by Christian and then I just felt a hit in the right rear going into the next corner,” said Ricky Taylor, who with his brother were coming off a dominating victory just down the coast in Long Beach, California two weekends ago. “We were racing hard, but I think there’s a difference between getting into each other door-to-door than front-to-rear. Obviously, it’s a disappointing result but other teams that we are fighting for the championship didn’t have a great day today, either. The 31 (Action Express Racing Corvette DP) didn’t get as many points as they could’ve, and the 5 finished behind us. So we’ll go to the next race at Detroit with our great car, which is always fast there, and we’ll pick up there and take the positives we can from here. We’re just six points back in the championship, which isn’t that much. We’ve got a great team and we’re going to keep pushing. It’s still early in the year. This time last year, we were much further behind, so I think we’ve got a good chance.”

Jordan Taylor, who qualified on the pole here a year ago and brought home the team’s second consecutive runner-up finish with his brother, was hoping for multiple yellows during his closing one-hour, 20-minute stint in hopes of a pair of wave-arounds that could have put him back on the lead lap. But such was not the case.

“When I got in the car, we were already two laps down, so it was just damage control from there,” he said. “We were just trying to stay out of the pits and make up any positions we could. A couple of cars fell out, which helped us. We were fighting to get back on the lead lap the whole time but it didn’t work out. We may have had a car to finish on the podium, for sure, the way the race shook out, so it’s disappointing, to say the least.”

The victory for Negri and Pew was the Shank team’s first since 2012. Negri crossed the finish line more than 30 seconds ahead of the runner-up and defending race-winning No. 90 Spirit of Daytona Corvette DP of Marc Goosens and Ryan Dalziel, and the third-place No. 31 Action Express Racing Corvette DP of Eric Curran and Dane Cameron. Both Mazda prototypes that qualified on the front row encountered problems, finishing well off the podium.

The sixth-place finish dropped the No. 10 team from third to fourth in the championship but just six points behind the new championship-leading No. 31 Action Express Corvette DP team.

“Well, I’m obviously disappointed because we had a car that could have been second, possibly even first,” team owner Wayne Taylor said. “I don’t understand Fittipaldi’s move there and it was very irritating. Luckily, we’ve got the best drivers and the best team and at least we salvaged some points today. We didn’t lose as many as we could have. I’m just terribly disappointed at what happened there because it simply did not need to happen. It’s off to the next one.”

Round five on the 2016 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship schedule is the Chevrolet Sports Car Classic on Saturday, June 4, on the Streets of Belle Isle temporary circuit in downtown Detroit. Live race coverage begins at 12:30 p.m. EDT on FS1.

Contact:

Laz.Denes@TrueSpeedCommunication.com

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