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| The Preferred Line - WCGT Road America race report |
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Leighton Reese finally got his Banner Corvette to the finish line and straight to the podium
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The start goes green and clean
The start of Round 7 was delayed to clean up the mess left by the Audi but when the lights went out under clear bright skies Archer blasted away from the pole with a trio of Porsche's in hot pursuit.
Aschenbach had gotten a reasonable launch and was right behind Archer as Ricardo Imrey had a great start from 5th and was right on his teammate's bumper in the #64 Cavenas Elevators/AXA Porsche with James Sofronas right along side of Imrey in his Global Motorsports Porsche 996.
Leighton Reese managed to keep the rest of the field behind his Banner Engineering Chevy Corvette in 5th as the newly revived Aston Martin DB9 of Johnny Mowlem moved up to 6th as the rest of the field were 2 and 3 wide behind him.
It was surprising that the Cadillac's of Andy Pilgrim and Ron Fellows didn't get a better launch. In fact Fellows got shuffled back to 10th behind Michael Galati's At Speed Volvo S60R and the McCann Plastics Dodge Viper of Mike McCann.
Rob Foster spun his #17 LTI Contracting Viper in turn 12 early but continued without any damage save to his pride as Rob was relegated to the back of the bus.
Sofronas was trying his level best on lap one to get past Imrey's Porsche as Ricardo was trying his best not to let that happen. James took an aggressive dive on Imrey which damaged his front suspension and Imrey's back bumper.
Sofronas limped to the pits for repairs while Ricardo continued. James would return to action and finish the race but the repairs took 6 laps worth of time as James even got out of his car to do a TV interview!
On lap two the race got ugly as Adel Elsayed spun into the out side barrier into the Kink and bounced back into the path of Mike Hartley's Viper who punted the unfortunate Elsayed backwards and at great speed into the barrier significantly shortening the Brisar Delvco Packaging Services Viper.
Both Adel and Mike were reported to be ok and sent to the care center for verification but Elsayed's Viper was definitely not!
Back to the action
During the 4 lap caution, 4 long laps as you will remember that Road America is 4 miles long and it seems to take an eternity for the cars to do a lap following that pace car, the running order was Archer, Aschenbach, Imrey, Reese, Mowlem, Pilgrim, Galati, McCann, Fellows and the #56 All Cut Concrete Cutting Viper of Ritch Marziale in 10th.
What of point's leader Lou Gigliotti and his fat Corvette? Lou and his LG Pro Long Tube Headers Chevy Corvette were in 13th position at this point.
When the course went green again on lap 7 Leighton Reese made the B&M Coolers Coolest Move of the Race by out braking Imrey into turn five.
He (Imrey) held his line and I just out broke him, Leighton said of the pass. It was a good clean pass. It was a good fair fight for the corner and we won!
That was the highlight of the race for me!
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