Of Marathons Turned Sprints; News Good and Bad; Luck and Skill
June 28, 2021
By David Phillips
IMSA Wire Service
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – If you didn’t enjoy Sunday’s IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen, well then, there’s not much I can say. Other than, what more could you want from an automobile race?
Preview of Things to Come?
Perhaps I was misinformed, but I was under the impression that the race was the first half of an IMSA doubleheader at Watkins Glen that featured one endurance race and one sprint race. Turns out, it was more like the first two-thirds of an IMSA tripleheader that featured one five-hour endurance race and a one-hour sprint, to be followed by the scheduled sprint race, the IMSA WeatherTech 240 on Friday. Thanks to a full-course yellow just past the five-hour mark, all five classes had what amounted to a reset that unleashed a frantic hour-long dash to the finish with some classes – notably GT Le Mans (GTLM) and GT Daytona (GTD) – having enough fuel on board to run flat out, while others – most notably Daytona Prototype international (DPi) – searching for a delicate balance between performance and fuel economy. The result was a veritable five-ring circus where no quarter was asked and none given among and between DPi, Le Mans Prototypes 2 and 3 (LMP2 and LMP3), GTLM and GTD. While there was an abundance of close calls, near misses and “incidental” contact, it’s little short of amazing the only major incident occurred when Kamui Kobayashi’s No. 48 Ally Cadillac Racing DPi rammed Kevin Magnussen in Turn 8 on the final lap, sending both cars into the sand trap and beaching Magnussen’s No. 01 Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac DPi, while Kobayashi recovered to take the checkered flag. That final hour whetted the appetite not only for Friday’s “scheduled” sprint race, but for the remaining events which also will feature all five IMSA classes on similarly fast and open natural terrain road courses – starting this week at The Glen.
Good News/Bad NewsGiven that they led most of the opening five hours, the ultimate outcome of the race had to be disappointing to Dane Cameron, Olivier Pla and the Meyer Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian team. On the other hand, “settling” for second place after leading most of the race represents a significant step forward for the No. 60 Acura ARX-05 DPi that has been outpaced by the other Acura, the No. 10 Konica Minolta campaigned by Wayne Taylor Racing in this, the first season for both teams’ association with the Acura DPi program. Some of those gains resulted from MSR’s recent test at Watkins Glen, which bodes well for the remainder of a 2021 WeatherTech Championship schedule starting with Friday’s sprint race at The Glen and includes stops at similarly fast, open road courses like Road America, WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca and Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta. 
Better Lucky AND GoodBill Auberlen would have been the first to tell you that luck played a role in some of his 63 IMSA wins through the years. His competitors and teammates also will tell you that Auberlen’s driving talent and fiercely competitive nature had plenty to do with most of those victories. But when those forces come together, as they did Sunday, Auberlen is a virtually unstoppable force. Auberlen and co-drivers Robbie Foley and Aidan Read had already stamped their authority on the GTD race, surging to the lead despite an unscheduled pit stop necessitated by a refueling issue. However, that lead was tenuous as that extra stop had put them “off sequence” with the balance of the GTD field. Ultimately, it required the No. 96 Turner Motorsport BMW M6 GT3 to pit for fuel with roughly an hour remaining in the race. In all likelihood, they would need another splash of fuel to make the finish, possibly taking them out of contention. But just as Auberlen committed to pit road, Gabriel Aubry’s ORECA LMP2 07 crashed heavily in Turn 1. Not only did the resulting full-course caution give the Turner BMW a “free” pit stop, Auberlen moved to the front of the GTD field when the competition cycled through pit stops during the yellow. What’s more, the lengthy clean-up for Aubry’s crash ensured Auberlen had plenty of VP Fuel to make the finish. So, while fortune played a prominent role in Auberlen’s record-extending 64th IMSA win, equally sure is that – as in his first 63 – Auberlen himself (along with his teammates) played an even greater part. |
