Second place for Mayer, Van Meppelen at Road America
Saturday’s VSCA Sprint Cup finale came down to the final pit stops to decide the race win in the GT3 category. Leading late stretches of the race, the No. 84 Porsche with Canadian Jay Van Meppelen behind the wheel, came to pit road for its final pit stop, but took too much fuel, so it had to settle for second place behind VSCA Sprint Cup champions, the No. 67 Porsche of Kinetic Racing.
“We had a good run and stayed out as long as we could. Then I came down pit road and I felt we had a good pit stop, but later on we found out we took quite a bit too much fuel. But I’m not sure it would have made a difference. Congratulations to the Kinetic boys. We’ll get them next time.”, said Van Meppelen, who had a mix of emotions between excitement about the second-place finish and missing the team’s first GT3 win in VSCA.
For team-mate Manuel Mayer, it was an especially demanding race, as he only recently recovered from COVID-19 and now faced the task of competing in a hot race car on a summer race day.
“Manny is the star this weekend, for sure. He’s obviously not a 100%, but that didn’t keep him from doing a fantastic job. He’s tough as nails.”, said team manager Benjamin Fischer.
In the 2022 VSCA Sprint Cup, the No. 84 finishes the championship in third place, with a 300 point margin. In the VSCA SportsCar Championship, the No. 84 Porsche sits in third place, 480 points behind the championship leaders, with one race to go.
The No. 14 Dallara P217 Prototype with drivers duo Niclas Pedersen and Jason Birnie hoped to get its second win in a row, after winning at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in July.
But a hit from behind, by another P2 Prototype under caution ruined those plans. The damage sustained in the incident made for handling problems the entire remainder of the race, causing Birnie to spin out twice.
“The car just didn’t feel right. But we had no time to get the repair done, because there was only one caution in the race and no second caution came up after that. It was very difficult to drive the car on the limit like that.”, said Birnie.
Salvaging the day as best as possible, Birnie went on to bring home a seventh-place finish, the team’s sixth top-ten finish in seven races this year.
In the VSCA Sprint Cup, the No. 14 Dallara ends up sixth, with a 190-point gap. The VSCA SportsCar Championship has one more race on the schedule, the season finale VSCA Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta in October. With one race to go, the No. 14 Dallara holds third position in the championship standings, with a 340 points gap to the leaders.
“Our Prototype program has really taken off this year. The competition in VSCA is second to none, so we knew this was a challenge. But we’ve done a great job as a team and have steadily improved. I’m really proud of the team effort, also today.”, Fischer commented on the No. 14 team’s race and season.
The No. 7 Dallara of Element SimRacing won the race and VSCA Sprint Cup championship.
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© 2022 Fischer Motorsport
The No. 85 Porsche 911 GT3 was involved in a huge crash, after contact with another GT3 competitor on the long back straight
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Making big headlines, but not in the way one had hoped, was the No. 85 Porsche 911 GT3 R with drivers Stephen Nobes and David Leman. Following the lone full-course caution of the day, Leman battled hard with the No. 151 Ferrari of FBP Racing.
Going down the back stretch, the two cars made contact and crashed into the barriers, bounced back on the track and collected two more cars, the No. 43 Dallara of then-championship leaders Torque Freak Racing and the No. 16 Porsche of Resolve Racing.
“I’ve apologized to the teams involved already. We’re not 100% sure yet what happened, but either way, nobody wants to see huge wrecks like this, especially so involving a championship contender.”, says Fischer.
“We’ll analyze this internally in the team and learn from it.”
The No. 85 Porsche team was forced to call it a day following the incident, as the car was destroyed in the crash. It was the team’s third time this season, that it scored no championship points in a race.
The VSCA SportsCar Championship season finale at Road Atlanta, the ten-hour VSCA Petit Le Mans takes place on October 8th.
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