Spirit of Daytona car claims win at Mid-Ohio

By ROB HAMILTON -

The Spirit of Day­tona Rac­ing car dri­ven by Richard West­brook and Michael Valiante claimed the check­ered flag on Sat­ur­day at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course’s EMCO Gears Clas­sic Rolex Sports Car Series race.

The duo led 87 of the 111 laps that com­posed the two-hour-45-minute event. After the car of Jon Fogerty and Alex Gur­ney led the first 17 laps, Valiante took the lead and held it until the 40th lap.

While the car of Alex Popow and Lucas Luhr took the lead twice for brief peri­ods of time over the remain­der of the race, West­brook held it for the lion’s share of the laps — includ­ing the final 34.

The Spirit of Day­tona car fin­ished .236 sec­onds in front of the one dri­ven by Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas. Terry Borcheller and David Dono­hue took third place over­all. Also, the Popow/Luhr car placed fourth and the Fogarty/Gurney vehi­cle wound up in sev­enth place.

The top eight cars in the race were all Day­tona Pro­to­types. The top Grand Tour­ing fin­isher was the ninth-place team of Bill Auberlen, Paul Dalla Lana and Billy Johnson.

While they only led 35 of the race’s 106 laps, Auber­lain held the top posi­tion in his class for the final 25 laps of the race. There were a total of 10 lead changes in this event, as opposed to five in the DP race.

Emil Assen­tato and Jeff Segal fin­ished sec­ond in the GT com­pe­ti­tion (10th over­all) and the duo of Robin Lid­dell and John Edwards took third (11th).

The EMCO Gears Clas­sic was one of two long races to be held on Sat­ur­day, as the two-hour-30-minute Con­ti­nen­tal Tire Sports Car Chal­lenge was held ear­lier in the afternoon.

In the 62-car race, Billy John­son and Jack Roush Jr. claimed first place; both over­all and in the Grand Sport class. The race lasted for 75 laps with 39 vehi­cles fin­ish­ing on the lead lap.

Sec­ond place went to the duo of Lau­son Aschen­bach and Eric Cur­ran; while third went to Matt Plumb and Nick Longhi.

Tak­ing the top place in the Street Tuner class was the team of Chad Gilsinger and Michael Valiante. They took 13th place overall.

They were fol­lowed by broth­ers Mark and Mat Pombo and then Andrew Novich and Adam Bur­row. Those two teams fin­ished 14th and 15th over­all, respectively.

There also were a hand­ful of sup­port races dur­ing the week­end, includ­ing the Mazda MX-5 Cup event Sunday.

In this 22-car race, Ste­van McAleer won by nearly four-tenths of a sec­ond over John Dean, while Natha­nial Sparks fin­ished third.

This race lasted for 27 laps and all but one dri­ver fin­ished on the lead lap.

More pic­tures from this event are on page 12-B.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Jun 13 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.