Lamborghini Gets First WeatherTech Championship Victory With Snow, Sellers, Paul Miller Racing At VI
A dominating performance by No. 48 Castrol Edge/Universal Industrial Sales Lamborghini Huracán GT3 co-drivers Madison Snow and Bryan Sellers gave Lamborghini its first IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship victory in the Michelin GT Challenge at VIRginia International Raceway.
One day after Snow captured his first TOTAL Pole Award in WeatherTech Championship competition, he and Sellers teamed up to lead virtually every lap to win the GT Daytona (GTD) class in the two-hour, 40-minute race around the 3.27-mile road circuit. The team only surrendered the lead for a total of five laps, during both of the race’s pit-stop cycles.
Sellers got away clean on a restart for a one-lap dash to the checkered flag following the race’s only full-course caution period and beat Lawson Aschenbach in the No. 9 Stevenson Automotive Group Audi R8 LMS to the stripe by 1.471 seconds to secure the victory. It was Sellers’ seventh victory in major U.S. sports car competition, with four previous victories in the American Le Mans Series and three in the WeatherTech Championship. It was his first in the GTD class.
"I was lucky to be the one to bring the car home today, but I think the majority of the credit should go to Madison,” Sellers said. “He was fantastic all weekend. We gave him an agenda in the opening drive, which took a while trying to get a gap, and he handed me the car with a 20-second lead. So, my whole goal was to maintain the game and at the same time saving fuel. So to him go all congratulations. When you are growing up as a kid and dream of driving Lamborghinis, and then get the first major win in the U.S. in a premier series, it’s a great honor."
For Snow, it was his third victory in major U.S. sports car racing, with two WeatherTech Championship wins and one in the ALMS. It was the second WeatherTech Championship win for the Paul Miller team and first since the 2014 Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta.
"We were pretty strong all weekend,” Snow said. “The pressure (to perform) kept getting more and more as the weekend went on. Obviously, we kept pressing harder and harder as the week went on to stay on top. For qualifying, we had the car set up perfectly; there's nothing more I can say about that. It was exactly the way I wanted it the whole way around.”
Aschenbach and co-driver Matt Bell came home second in the Stevenson Motorsports Audi to earn their best results in WeatherTech Championship competition. Their previous best was a fifth-place run last month at Lime Rock Park.
Andy Lally and John Potter crossed the finish line third in the No. 44 Magnus Racing Audi R8 LMS, but were excluded from the final race results when a minimum ride height infraction was discovered in post-race technical inspection.
As a result, Robin Liddell and Andrew Davis made it two Stevenson Motorsports Audis in the top three with a third-place result in the No. 6 Stevenson Automotive Group R8.
The post-race penalty on Lally and Potter enabled Christina Nielsen and Alessandro Balzan to extend their GTD championship lead to 20 points over Ben Keating and Jeroen Bleekemolen. Nielsen and Balzan finished seventh in the Michelin GT Challenge aboard the No. 63 Scuderia Corsa Ferrari 488 GT3, due in part to an “overboost” drive-through penalty late in the race. Keating and Bleekemolen were sixth in the ViperExchange.com/Cruising with the Monkey Dodge Viper GT3-R at VIR.
Alex Riberas and Mario Farnbacher charged from the rear of the starting grid to finish fourth in the No. 23 Heart of Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R for Alex Job Racing/Team Seattle. The car started from the back due to a tire change after qualifying.
Corey Lewis and Spencer Pumpelly made it two Lamborghinis in the top-five GTD finishing positions with a fifth-place run in the No. 16 Pertamina/Monster Energy Lamborghini Huracán GT3. The team has substantial local ties, as Pumpelly is a native Virginian and the team is based in North Carolina.
The next round of the WeatherTech Championship is the Lone Star Le Mans at Circuit of The Americas in Austin, Texas on Saturday, Sept. 17. All four classes will be in action for the two-hour, 40-minute race, which will be televised live on FS2.
Contact:
nsiebens@imsa.com
