Kurtz And Braun Hang On For Third Overall Win Of 2023 At VIR
The #04 CrowdStrike by Riley Mercedes-AMG GT3 of George Kurtz and Colin Braun backed up a Pro-Am class win and third-place overall finish on Saturday, with an overall win in GT World Challenge America Race 2 at VIRginia International Raceway.
It’s their third outright victory of the season and fourth Pro-Am class win of 2023 – a weekend sweep for Kurtz and Braun which comes one week after they took the LMP2 Pro-Am class win at this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Braun started Sunday’s race from the outside of the front row, where he was joined by a familiar, returning name to the series. After plans to race with Hunter McKenna fell through late in the off-season, Turner Motorsports returned to GT World Challenge America this weekend! This reorganised effort was built around Bronze-rated GT3 newcomer Vincent “Vin” Barletta, and Robby Foley, who drove the Turner BMW M4 GT3 last season in GT World Challenge America.
Foley brought the fan-favourite team from Massachusetts back to the series with an exclamation point when he won the pole for Race 2 on Saturday morning, ahead of Braun, and Mario Farnbacher in the #93 Racers Edge Motorsports Acura NSX GT3.
The yellow #096 BMW held the lead when a Safety Car was deployed 12 minutes into the race. The #91 DXDT Racing Mercedes of Corey Lewis was running fifth when a broken left-rear suspension brought his day to an end along with Utah’s Jeff Burton.
Once the race got going, Neil Verhagen in the #38 ST Racing BMW was back on a charge. He passed Mario Farnbacher into turn 16 on the second lap, and then outbraked the #45 Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R of Jan Heylen going up towards the Roller Coaster Chicane to claim third behind Foley and Braun. Race 1 overall winner Daniel Morad was also carving his way through the field after qualifying a disappointing 13th. Before the first round of pit stops, Morad had driven the orange and grey #9 TR3 Racing Mercedes back into the top ten.
Foley’s lead was just over a second when the ten-minute pit window opened, but a slow getaway from the pit stall would prove costly. Braun, Verhagen, and Heylen brought their cars in right at the end of the pit window, and clean pit stops allowed the new drivers of each car – Kurtz, Samantha Tan, and Charlie Luck – to jump ahead of Barletta who’d dropped to fourth after pit stops.
The battle for the Pro-Am and overall victory would be contested fiercely over the final stint by Kurtz and Tan. Tan saw an opportunity to get past into Horseshoe Corner (turn one) but her older, more experienced adversary was able to take the defensive line and hold his advantage.
The two cars remained in lockstep over the remaining 30 minutes of the race, and in the end, it was Kurtz who held on to take the victory, less than a second on the road ahead of Tan.
The #38 ST Racing BMW was given a six-tenths of a second time penalty after the race for a short pit stop, but that was nothing more than a footnote for what was an exceptional weekend from Samantha Tan and Neil Verhagen.
Behind them, the battle for the Pro class win was also up for grabs as Kenton Koch had gotten aboard the #9 TR3 Racing Mercedes, hunting down class leader Ashton Harrison in the #93 Racers Edge Acura.
With just over 20 minutes left, Koch saw an opportunity to take the class lead. Fittingly, at Left Hook Corner, the two cars exchanged wheel-to-wheel blows. Harrison’s Acura slid wide off the apex at turn five, and Koch drove through to take the Pro class victory.
He’d advance one more overall position, passing Luck’s #45 Porsche. TR3 Racing, who stepped up to the Pro class this weekend by way of Koch replacing Ziad Ghandour, left VIR with the maximum 50 points available and a double Pro victory. Koch picked up three wins on the weekend including his Race 1 victory in GT4 America.
This also gave Mercedes-AMG a clean sweep of both classes (the Am class laid dormant with RealTime Racing stepping up to Pro-Am).
Luck, the Virginia native, consolidated fourth for the #45 Wright Porsche 992 after a tough race the day before.
Harrison would finish fifth overall and second in the Pro class to bounce back after a first race derailed by multiple tyre punctures in the final 30 minutes.
In sixth overall, and fourth in Pro-Am, was the #120 Wright Motorsports Porsche 991.2 (Adam Adelson/Elliott Skeer), followed by three more Pro cars: The #28 RS1 Porsche 992 (Eric Filgueiras/Stevan McAleer), the #21 Conquest Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 (Manny Franco/Alessandro Balzan), and the #94 BimmerWorld Racing BMW M4 GT3 (Chandler Hull/Bill Auberlen). Hull drove back into the top ten after serving a drive-through penalty for overspeeding in the pits, but that penalty cost the Virginia-based team a shot at the class win.
As for Barletta, a brief slip off at Oak Tree Corner preceded a drop to tenth overall for the #096 Turner BMW in the end.
The only other retirement was the #16 ACI Motorsports Porsche 991.2 (Pedro Torres/Spencer Pumpelly), which parked in the pits half an hour from the chequered flag. It was not the best weekend for the team from Chattanooga, Tennessee.
With eight races completed and five left to go – including the season-ending Indianapolis 8 Hour Race – the attention should now surely be turned towards the battles for the Pro and Pro-Am championship titles.
Filgueras and McAleer still lead the Pro Drivers’ Championship on 145 points, 16 points ahead of Harrison and Farnbacher. MDK Motorsports’ young duo of Seth Lucas and Trenton Estep aren’t out of it by any means, trailing by 35 points – with Hull and Auberlen a further two points behind.
A weekend sweep from Kurtz and Braun has also made the Pro-Am Drivers’ Championship fight much closer. Adelson and Skeer still lead the championship on 134 points, but a 36-point advantage going into the VIR weekend has been cut down to four points, ahead of Kurtz and Braun.
Derek DeBoer of TRG (The Racers’ Group) is third in the standings on his own, but after a tough result in Race 2 for himself and Valentin Hasse-Clot, he faces a 43 point deficit to the leaders. Luck and Heylen are a further four points back, while Tan leapt to within seven points of Hasse-Clot for fifth in the table.
GT World Challenge America takes a two-month break before returning in August to Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.
Images © SRO Motorsports Group America
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