VIR Looms Large In Race For IMSA GT Championships

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – The production car-based GT classes of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship have three upcoming races to settle their title tilts, starting this weekend with the Michelin GT Challenge at Virginia Int’l Raceway.

It’s the only race on the WeatherTech Championship calendar featuring Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) and GTD PRO as the headline draw. Cars built to FIA GT3 specification are an ideal match for the rough and rustic road course nestled in the heart of stock car country near the North Carolina border.

VIR packs 17 corners into 3.27 up-and-down miles – one sequence of corners is literally called Roller Coaster – and with little to nothing in the way of track limits, it’s a circuit that requires a combination of commitment, bravery, and precision like no other track in America.

This is sports car racing in its purest form, featuring the ultimate factory race-prepared versions of iconic street machines, including the Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo, BMW M4 GT3 EVO, Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R, Ferrari 296 GT3, Ford Mustang GT3, Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVO2, Lexus RC F GT3, Mercedes-AMG GT3 and Porsche 911 GT3 R (992).

“VIR is one of my favorite racetracks,” said Russell Ward, who along with Philip Ellis leads the GTD championship in the No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3. “It’s just a super technical and committed racetrack. Those are my favorite kind of racetracks – the ones with a ‘National Park’ kind of environment, with older surfaces that give you quite a bit of tire wear. And no runoffs – there are no track limits or anything like that.

“I can’t wait to get out there.”

The battle for the GTD championship features a likely three-way fight between defending champions Ellis and Ward, who lead Jack Hawksworth and Parker Thompson (No. 12 Vasser Sullivan Racing Lexus RC F GT3) by 112 points, with Casper Stevenson another five points back in the No. 27 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo he most often shares with Tom Gamble.

The Winward Mercedes duo rose to the top of the points table with a pair of early race wins at the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring and the TireRack.com Monterey SportsCar Championship.

At that point, they held a 124-point cushion over Thompson and Hawksworth, with the No. 27 Aston at a 267-point deficit in fourth.

The turning point of the season came at the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen at Watkins Glen International. Ward was swept into a collision between three Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) cars on the rain-slicked track, necessitating a 36-minute pit stop that dropped the No. 57 to a 16th-place finish.

Meanwhile, the No. 12 Lexus appeared to be on the way to the GTD class victory until Hawksworth ran out of fuel on the last lap and dropped to 11th. The fortuitous winner was the No. 27 Aston Martin, which vaulted to within 60 points of Ward and Ellis.

It also dropped the No. 12 Lexus 76 points behind, instead of vaulting them to the lead.

Hawksworth called the sudden turn of fortune “a heartbreaker … maybe the worst day in the history of this team, in terms of the way it ended.”

Added Thompson: “It was a championship day for five hours and 58 minutes of the Watkins Glen Six Hours. It’s only halfway (of the season) and now we have to give it everything we have for the rest of the championship.”

The three key GTD contenders have pretty much held serve over the most recent two races – the Chevrolet Grand Prix at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park and the Motul SportsCar Grand Prix at Road America.

Ward and Ellis rebounded to claim second place at CTMP, where they were joined on the podium by Hawksworth and Thompson, who finished third. Stevenson, paired on this occasion with Aston Martin Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) driver Roman De Angelis, took fifth.

There was little to choose from just looking at the results at Road America, where all three were clustered between ninth and 11th. But the intensity of the championship battle was clearly ramping up, because Ellis was assigned incident responsibility in a clash with Gamble in the No. 27 Aston Martin.

Later in the race, Ellis got together with Hawksworth in another bumping match, this time with Hawksworth being assigned incident responsibility.

The ninth-place finish at Road America was particularly disappointing for the Aston Martin team, as Stevenson had qualified an IMSA career-best second and Gamble was running second when the entry took damage from a spinning car.

“From there, it was just kind of damage limitation with the performance we had,” Gamble said. “A bit of a shame, but looking at the positives, we gained points on our championship rivals."

With a standard-length race at VIR, a six-hour skirmish at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, and the 10-hour finale at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta, the GTD championship is up for grabs.

“I’m kind of surprised we haven’t gotten a win yet, but podiums are points, and points are prizes,” said Thompson. “We’re locked in on the championship. You know when you start the season that it’s going to Petit Le Mans. Jack and I are not surprised that it’s this tight. We knew it was going to be this tough. That’s what makes this championship so amazing and that’s what makes Petit Le Mans, as a finale, just probably the best race of the season.”

“I think the Lexus – the [No.] 12 car – and us, we both experienced our bad luck at Watkins Glen,” noted Ward. “We’ve had a year and a half of incident-free racing, so you knew you were due for something at some point.

“Hopefully that’s out of the way now.”