No. 14 Dallara starts from pole, finishes tenth at Laguna Seca
Saturday’s Monterey Sports Car Challenge easily can be described as the wildest, most tumultuous race of the season thus far. A huge part of the two-hour, 40 minute race was spent under yellow flag conditions as cars kept on getting involved in crashes and incidents.
For Fischer Motorsport things looked great early on, in particular for the No. 14 Dallara P217 P2 Prototype team. Niclas Pedersen put the car on VSCA GRID Pole Position with an unbeatable lap time of 1:12.604. Consequently, the “Danish Dynamo” was happy about starting in the race.
“It feels great to win the pole position for the team. The car felt great and I was able to get the most out of it. Now we’ve got to carry this over into the race and bring home the bacon on race day.”, Pedersen commented.
In the GT3 category, the No. 84 Porsche with Manuel Mayer and Nelson Eberth struggled mightily in GRID Pole Qualifying and ended up about six seconds off pace, second-to-last on the grid.
Eberth, who started the race in the No. 84 Porsche struggled to find pace all weekend, in his first-ever start at Laguna Seca. But after staying out of trouble and keeping the car clean, was able to hand the car over to teammate Manuel Mayer about 45 minutes into the race, under a full course caution.
In the No. 85 Porsche, with the absence of regular driver Pascal Theis, who missed his first race of the season, it was Jay Van Meppelen starting the race in his debut for Fischer Motorsport. The Canadian put in a solid lap and earned the 14th starting spot in GT3.
Manuel Mayer and Stephen Nobes, respectively, took over from their teammates for the latter part of the race that was marred by a total of five caution periods, giving the race a torn-apart kind of feel to it and fans were waiting for the ultimate showdown.
Less than twenty minutes before the end, the race restarted for the final time. Mayer and Nobes were both running in the top-ten. Jason Birnie was also holding a good position in the top-ten. However, several incidents late in the race, including some car contacts led to post-race penalties relegating the No. 14 Dallara P217 from a P4 to a P10 finish, one lap down from the leaders.
Mayer also was penalized for a contact with another competitor late in the race, plus the Teisendorf, Germany native also had to overcome another incident, when as an innocent bystander, he ran into one of two slowed GT3 cars directly ahead, that had just made contact on the exit of turn four.
One official race results were announced, the No. 85 Porsche team was crushed the hardest. Instead of earning a top-five finish, the entry was disqualified for exceeding the average driver iRating cap.
“I completely take responsibility for this. This was an error in the entry registration for the race, that got lost in the paperwork. I can only apologize again and again to Jay, Stephen and the entire team for this mistake. It’s absolutely brutal, obviously and really spoils an otherwise great run by the boys.”, team manager Benjamin Fischer said.
The No. 84 Porsche ended up eighth officially in GT3. Mayer was disappointed:
“There was more in the car today. We could have - should have – finished in the top-five. The speed was in the car, but I made too many mistakes late in the race. So this is really on me.”
In the championship standings, the No. 14 Dallara team now moves up one spot into fifth place, 280 points out of the lead.
In GT3, the No. 85 Porsche falls way behind due to the loss of points at Laguna Seca and now sits in 17th, 450 points behind. The No. 84 Porsche team is eighth in the championship with a gap of 270 points to the leaders.
The next VSCA SportsCar Championship race is at Mid-Ohio on May 21st.
Related Links