Team on the Hunt for a Third Straight Victory at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna SecaApril 26, 2023By John OreoviczIMSA Wire Service DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Filipe Albuquerque and Ricky Taylor opened the 2023 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship with a podium finish in the Rolex 24 At Daytona, added Acura’s first-ever pole position at its “home” race – the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach – and they rank a close third in the points standings three races into IMSA’s new Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) era.Nothing to be disappointed about, right? Wrong.Taylor, Albuquerque, team principal Wayne Taylor and everyone involved with the No. 10 Konica Minolta Acura ARX-06 program believe they were oh-so-close to winning all three of those races to open the 2023 campaign.The No. 10 Acura led 63 laps in the Rolex 24 before encountering problems that forced the team, including endurance drivers Louis Deletraz and Brendon Hartley, to overcome a three-lap deficit. They ultimately finished second, lacking the necessary late-race speed to chase down the winning No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian Acura.“It was inspiring to watch Filipe at the end, charging through the field,” Ricky Taylor said. “He always gives everything and leaves nothing on the table. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the pace for the win and ended up second.”At the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, Albuquerque was dicing for the win with the two Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963s until all three cars crashed in heavy traffic less than 20 minutes from the end of the race.Bottled up by GT class traffic through Turn 1, Albuquerque thought leader Mathieu Jaminet left a gap in the slightly curved run toward Turn 3. The No. 10 Acura and the No. 6 Porsche came together, drawing in the No. 7 Porsche wheeled by Felipe Nasr, and chaos ensued.Albuquerque and Jaminet both insisted there were no hard feelings after what was ruled a racing accident with no penalty assessed for incident responsibility.“There’s no payback; there’s no hard feelings at all,” Albuquerque said. “I really wanted to win that race and we were looking good. In my mind, the hole was there. What happened, happened, and I don’t think anyone planned that.”Snafus Prevent Long Beach RedemptionThe following race, Albuquerque secured the pole with a margin of nearly 0.7 seconds on the same Long Beach street course that had proven so difficult for Acura the past five years in the Daytona Prototype international (DPi) era. Albuquerque remained in command through the opening stint, but a calamitous series of events made the sprint race’s single pit stop and driver change anything but ordinary for the No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Autosport duo.Having encountered problems with his ear plugs early in the race, Albuquerque had to manually connect and disconnect a radio lead to communicate with the team. During the lone pit stop, the errant cord became caught in the seatbelts during the driver change. In the ensuing delay, Taylor accidentally shifted the car into neutral, forcing a reboot that delayed the pit exit launch sequence. He also twice engaged the pit lane speed limiter while negotiating the tight Long Beach hairpin.It all added up to 27 seconds of delay and a massive deficit from which to recover.Undaunted, Taylor fought back from fourth place to challenge Jaminet in the No. 6 Porsche for the lead on the penultimate lap, under braking into Turn 1. But the Acura slid into the tire barrier while Jaminet whizzed past unscathed to claim Porsche’s first modern-era GTP win.“If we had more time, maybe I would have been more patient,” Taylor said. “We just wanted to win this for Acura. This was always our track where we had the most performance deficit to the field and it just says so much about Acura, HPD, ORECA and Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Autosport to turn our weakest track into our strongest track. When you have the strongest car, you want to repay those people and win the race, so it’s just disappointing.”Prior to the Long Beach race, Taylor and Albuquerque noted that they were already adjusting their mindset to full-season, title-seeking mode. Taylor and the team founded and managed by his father each have two championships in the top prototype class – winning one together in 2017 – while Albuquerque is in search of his first season crown.“We need at one point to start looking at the championship, and I think now is that point for managing the championship,” Albuquerque said.In that regard, their glass is half full, even after consecutive DNFs. Albuquerque and Taylor are within easy striking distance of early points leaders Jaminet and Nick Tandy in a GTP championship that sees the top four contenders clustered within 21 points.The Long Beach-winning Porsche duo hold a one-point edge over Alexander Sims, Pipo Derani and the No. 31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac Racing Cadillac V-Series.R, who gratefully accepted an unlikely victory at Sebring when the No. 10 Acura and the two Porsches crashed. Taylor and Albuquerque are 20 points behind the No. 6, then it’s a one-point gap to the No. 25 BMW M Team RLL duo of Nick Yelloly and Connor De Phillippi, coming off consecutive second-place finishes.The next opportunity for Taylor and Albuquerque and the Konica Minolta team to break into the GTP win column is the Motul Course de Monterey Powered by Hyundai N, May 12-14 at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. Their victories at WeatherTech Raceway in 2021 and ’22 capped a streak of four consecutive DPi triumphs for Acura at the classic California road course from 2019-22.Given their form so far in 2023, is it too early to predict a three-peat? |
