No.31 Whelen Cadillac dominates home IMSA Detroit GP

Credit: Michelin Racing USA

The No.31 Whelen Cadillac of Earl Bamber and Jack Aitken won its home racing quite comfortably, despite a late-stage safety car which bunched up the field, with GTD Pro honours going to the No.3 Pratt Miller Motorsports Corvette after some chaotic final laps.

As it happened

In the start both class leaders held place, with Earl Bamber in the No.31 Whelen Cadillac leading from Nick Yelloly in the No.93 Meyer Shank Racing Acura and Alexander Sims in the No.3 Pratt Miller Motorsports Corvette, leading from Ben Barnicoat in the No.14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus.

Meanwhile both cars that started from second place in GTP and GTD Pro went backwards, with the No.60 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac suffering from damage early on, with Tom Blomqvist being shown the mechanical black flag and subsequently pitting.

Some debris from his Cadillac cause an initial Full Course Yellow after a couple of laps, that then turning into a safety car period that lasted until lap 6.

The No.4 Corvette meanwhile lost two places in the GTD Pro class, falling to 4th, behind the No.14 Lexus, as well as the No.65 Ford Racing Mustang of Frederic Vervisch.

When green flag racing resumed, both Penske Porsche cars went on a short rampage, getting past both the No.10 Wayne Taylor Cadillac of Filipe Albuquerque, although Kevin Estre touched the Portuguese driver in his attempt to get past in his No.6 Porsche and dispatching of the No.25 WRT BMW of Marco Wittmann for fifth and sixth, with the No.6 car leading the No.7, driven by Felipe Nasr.

The sister BMW car, the No.24 driven by Sheldon van der Linde fared better, diving past Louis Deletraz's No.40 Cadillac for third.

Up front the race was simple and straight-forward up until the pit stop sequence, with Bamber gradually getting more of a gap on second place man Yelloly and third placed Van der Linde, with the New Zealander 5.6 seconds ahead when he entered the pits, to swap with teammate Jack Aitken.

Similar things occured in the GTD Pro class, with Sims around 5.8 seconds ahead of Barnicoat before the pit stops.

Around the 22 minute mark two seperate incidents occured, with Dennis Olsen losing the brakes of his No.64 Ford Mustang at turn 8, with something similar happening to the No.59 RLL McLaren of Max Esterson at turn 4, with both rejoining the race without any harm done.

With the three leading GTP cars pitting shortly before the half hour mark, the two Penske Porsches found themselves leading for some laps, trying to go as long as possible in the overcut. The same though occured in BMW's strategy department, with Marco Wittmann going the longest of all leading cars.

That evidently worked, as despite Aitken regaining the lead, Philipp Eng, now behind the wheel of the No.25 BMW was second, around 6 seconds behind, with Laurens Vanthoor third in the No.6 Penske Porsche.

The biggest losers were the No.24 BMW and the No.93 Acura, that found themselves down in fifth and sixth, even behind the No.40 Cadillac of Jordan Taylor.

With around 53 minutes to go, Laurin Heinrich's battle with Roman de Angelis for 10th place got out of hand, as the driver of the No.5 JDC-Miller Porsche received a hefty Stop + 60 seconds penalty, due to the German putting the No.23 THOR Aston Martin essentially in the wall, on the rundown from turn 4 to turn 5.

Another completely unnecessary incident occured shortly afterwards, when Dries Vanthoor in the No.24 BMW spun the GTD Pro No.14 Lexus half-way round in turn 5. Vanthoor tried to go up inside Jack Hawksworth but was too far behind, with the Lexus subsequently hitting the wall, the Briton lucky to not receive any notable damage and not to lose position to the No.4 Corvette of Nicky Catsburg.

The BMW driver received a drive-through penalty for the incident, which demoted him from fourth to eighth initially, before the Belgian subsequently recovered to fifth, in the bunched up GTP field

Up ahead, Aitken was still increasing his overall lead over Eng in second, with the gap around 10 seconds on the half-way mark, with the No.6 Porsche only slightly behind the BMW in third.

As for the GTD Pro class, the No.3 Corvette, now driven by Antonio Garcia held firm in first place, although he was being pressured by the No.14 Lexus of Hawksworth, with the sister No.4 Corvette not that far behind in third.

On lap 68 and with only around 19 minutes to go, a FCY was called, then turned into a short yellow-safety car period, due to debris from Vanthoor's No.6 Porsche, which was in evident trouble. Vanthoor had actually lost third place a few moments earlier, due to losing the brakes on the end of the back straight.

Although no footage was shown initially, an incident involving the No.6 Porsche and No.24 BMW was noted by the stewards, with it being potentially the cause of the Porsche's massive rear damage.

Right after racing resumed, the fan favorite No.77 AO Racing Porsche of Nick Tandy was into the wall at turn 5, with a full course yellow being called, although Tandy managed to get going again. The FCY was called more due to debris on the track, after contact between the two leading GTD Pro cars, with the No.3 Corvette of Garcia being divebombed by the No.14 Lexus of Hawksworth for the lead.

This was short-lived though as Garcia was given the place back after the stewards ordered as such, with Hawksworth given a costly drive-through penalty, that ruined any hopes of his for victory.

With five minutes to go racing resumed for the last time, with Aitken timing it to perfection, easily holding on to the lead, winning by six seconds from second place Eng in the No.25 BMW, thus giving Cadillac a deserved home win at Detroit, with Ricky Taylor getting third in the No.10 Wayne Taylor Cadillac.

This meant that Cadillac and General Motors celebrated their home Detroit race with a 1-3, whilst BMW kept their podium streak alive. The No.93 Meyer Shank Racing Acura and the No.7 Penske Porsche rounded out the top five.

Further back the GTD Pro racing was frantic and chaotic, with Nicky Catsburg receiving a drive-through penalty for an incident with the No.15 Lexus where he moved under braking, while shortly after that the No.64 Ford Mustang of Olsen was spun round, dropping back to eighth.

The class win though belonged to the No.3 Pratt Miller Motorsports Corvette, by 1.7 seconds from the No.9 Pfaff Motorsports Lamborghini in second and the No.65 Ford Racing Mustang in third, with the No.15 Vasser Sullivan Lotus rapidly dropping down the order in the final moments, due to the damage from the incident with Catsburg kicking in and a 60 second penalty for running the red pit exit light. They ulimately finished in ninth.