Acura reduced Porsche's lead in the manufacturers' championship with third at the SportsCar Grand Prix
- Ghazlan Atqiya Firmansyah
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
Written by Ghazlan Atqiya Firmansyah
On Saturday, the No.93 Acura Meyer Shank Racing (MSR) took pole position in the SportsCar Grand Prix at Road America, but they eventually finished the race in third, which was plagued by yellow flags.
In the pit box, MSR received additional assistance from the Honda Racing Corporation (HRC), as its associates were sent to strategise and engineer the Acura ARX-06 cars for the first time this season.
Yelloly led the grid at the start and had to survive the yellow flag conditions for 22 of the 66 laps. The cautions proved to be an advantage for the teams that managed their energy management correctly, in this case, BMW.
With an hour left, the BMW cars had already completed their final pit stops. During the last caution in the final seven minutes of the race, their GTP rivals pitted, allowing the BMWs to take the lead. Van der Zande was among the drivers who pitted. The Dutchman was on the hunt for the second-placed No. 24 BMW before the clock ran out, ultimately finishing third for Acura.
The sister car No.60, driven by Tom Blomqvist and Colin Braun opted for a split strategy due to the cautions, but an incident and a subsequent penalty sent them to the back of the grid before they fought back to finish in seventh.
Yelloly, who qualified on pole, was grateful to finish the race on the podium: "Third for us, and at the end of the day it was a good haul of championship points.
"We’re closing the gap in the manufacturers’ championship to the leaders, which was always the aim from the get-go.
"Obviously, a bit disappointed not to win the race after having started on pole. But overall, a solid weekend, another podium for the No.93 crew and something to build on leading up to Indianapolis."
Van der Zande said: "Road America is always exciting, but it's always a bit of a gamble with the strategy here.
"That’s how it turned out to be again today. I mean, I think the BMWs were dead last, and they took a gamble and they won. Congrats to them.
"We did a good job, we had [a] good pace in the No.93 Acura, and it was a good result for the points in the manufacturers’ championship, so I think it's a good day for us at HRC and Meyer Shank Racing."
Blomqvist said the race was challenging and lamented the penalty that cost him more points: "It was a challenging race, just got unlucky there.
"Strategically, I wouldn't say we did a perfect job, and then unfortunately, we had a bit of an incident in the pits. It’s just such a tight, crowded pit lane, and sometimes these things happen.
"With the penalty, it just put us on the back foot. We did what we could, but unfortunately, there’s just not much you can do when you're back there."
Braun said it was a tough day for the No.60 car: "On the No.60 side, a little bit of a tough day.
"Obviously, we kind of split strategies there at the start just to do something different. I think all the manufacturers did, and it kind of put us in the back a little bit. Then we got a yellow at the wrong time, unfortunately.
"Coming in for the driver change, I turned into my pit box, and a crew guy from BMW came out wide of the tyre changer. He tried to miss me, I tried to miss him, but unfortunately, we collided and we got a drive-through penalty.
"I hope he is okay. With the penalty, we were kind of boxed in for the rest of the race. Happy for the No.93 guys to get another podium for Acura."
While they missed out on a win, Acura cut Porsche's lead in the GTP Manufacturers' Championship and now sits 45 points behind with two rounds to go, including Indianapolis and Road Atlanta.
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