Van der Zande, Popow Shine For Starworks Motorsport At Lime Rock Park, Win IMSA WeatherTech Northeas

Alex Popow and Renger van der Zande teamed up on a hot and busy day at Lime Rock Park to score their third IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship victory of the season in the IMSA WeatherTech Northeast Grand Prix.

Popow, driving the No. 8 Starworks Motorsport ORECA FLM09, started fifth and nearly sustained damage in an incident at the start, but was able to fight his way to the lead 33 minutes into the race after the first round of pit stops under caution. He led the next 30 laps before turning the car over to van der Zande, who took the lead with one hour, five minutes remaining, and led the rest of the way in the Prototype Challenge (PC) class.

“I’m very happy with the win, it’s another advantage for the championship,” said van der Zande, who joined Popow in winning for the third time in four races. “Lime Rock is a crazy place, because it’s a small track and you’re always wrestling your way through the traffic. It’s a fair fight here, because you can easily lose position coming through traffic. I love coming to Lime Rock, and I’m very happy with my team.”

Tom Kimber-Smith came up just 0.815 seconds short of repeating at Lime Rock in the No. 52 PR1/Mathiasen Professional Security Consultants/Westfield Motorsports ORECA. Robert Alon led twice for extended periods during his double stint, losing the lead on a pair of pit stops. Kimber-Smith took over with one hour, four minutes remaining, and ran second behind van der Zande the rest of the way.

“I really got held up in a lot of traffic,” said Kimber-Smith, a resident of nearby Pleasant Valley, New York who scored his sixth podium finish of the season. “That gave Renger a gap. Then I was able to pull back from a 14-second deficit. But Renger had a good race, and he had a fast car. This year we seem to be quite quick, but just not reaching the top step of the podium enough.”

James French and Kyle Marcelli finished third in the No. 38 Performance Tech Motorsports ORECA.

Unofficially, van der Zande and Popow increased their lead in the PC standings to 17 points over Alon and Kimber-Smith, 267-250.

Audi Takes Second GT Daytona Victory On Late Charge By Lally

Andy Lally passed Jeroen Bleekemolen with 22 minutes remaining and went on to score his second GT Daytona (GTD) victory of the season in the No. 44 Magnus Racing Audi Tire Center/Auric Solar Audi R8 LMS GT3 started by John Potter. Seventh with one hour remaining, Lally worked his way to the front in a tight battle that saw the top seven cars separated by only two seconds.

“That was one of the most fun but frustrating drives of my life,” said Lally, who led the final 20 laps. “You have to make picks and pass on the outside to make that work. Really, it’s so special because these guys worked so hard after the wreck at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. We talked about putting a special setup for Lime Rock to make this thing turn right. We planned for the end of the stint to be loose. We dialed like 80 degrees of wing into this thing and stuck a billboard on the back and it stuck, and that’s what let us come through with the win there.”

Robin Liddell took second in the No. 6 Stevenson Auto Group Audi LMS GT3 started by Andrew Davis, followed by Bleekemolen and Ben Keating in the No. 33 Riley Motorsports ViperExchange.com/Cruising with the Monkey Dodge Viper GT3-R.

“I was leading, but I think we had the slowest car out there today,” Bleekemolen admitted. “It was difficult to hang on to. I got hit a few times, but we were still able to finish third. That’s an amazing job by the team, to get us this far up, and a great drive by Ben. Absolutely the maximum we could do.”

Christina Nielsen and Alessandro Balzan finished 11th in the No. 63 Scuderia Corsa Ferrari 488 GT3. Entering the event with a 22-point lead in the class, they now unofficially sit ahead of Potter and Lally by 13 points, 212-199.

• Colin Braun won the overall pole Friday in the No. 54 Flex-Box/Composite Resources ORECA FLM09, but CORE autosport opted to have Jon Bennett start the race, moving him to the back of the PC grid. Braun took over at the one-hour mark, but was penalized right off for running over an air hose on the pit stop. Moments later, Braun returned to the pits with left-rear suspension damage after contact with a GTD car that spun while he was passing it going into the chicane. That resulted in the car’s retirement and an eighth-place finish.

• With ambient temperatures in the low nineties – and track temperature surpassing 120 degrees – Liddell admitted running both the Continental Tire SportsCar Championship and WeatherTech Championship may have been a bit much. Stephen Simpson, Spencer Pumpelly and Corey Lewis also ran both races.

• Next up for the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship is the Continental Tire Road Race Showcase at Road America on the weekend of August 5-7. All four classes will be in action in the two-hour, 40-minute race.

Contact:

nsiebens@imsa.com

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