DETROIT — A few hours after qualifying 15th for Sunday’s (June 5) Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix for the NTT IndyCar Series, Kyle Kirkwood scored his first win in IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship competition by co-driving the winning car in the GTD class in Saturday’s (June 4) Chevrolet Sports Car Classic.
The 100-minute race started with Kirkwood on pole in the No. 17 Vasser Sullivan Racing Lexus RC F GT3 but the Florida native was overtaken at the start by Roman De Angelis in the No. 27 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage GT3. Kirkwood stopped one lap later than De Angelis as each driver handed their cars off to their co-drivers. The Vasser Sullivan crew were faster on pit road by nearly 4.2 seconds and that was enough to give Kirkwood’s co-driver Ben Barnicoat a lead that he would not relinquish for the final hour of the race.
Barnicoat brought the car across the start/finish line 2.263 seconds in front of Ross Gunn with the No. 1 Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT3 of Madison Snow and Bryan Sellers finishing third.
For Kirkwood, this is his first professional race win after scoring dozens of wins in junior-level forms of open wheel racing. This win had a different feeling to all the rest that the 2021 Indy Lights champion has had so far.
“It’s with a team that we’ve been pushing so hard for a while now to get a win,” Kirkwood said in the post-race press conference. As everyone knows, the GTD field is absolutely stacked, especially for the pro drivers and I mean, it’s been phenomenal. This one really hits home with the team because this is my first win with them and I’ve been with them for a while now. We’ve had a lot of misfortune and this one feels good to at least break the ice and get our first win and I hope there’s going to be many more here in the short future.”
The Vasser Sullivan team installed Barnicoat as a substitute driver since one of Vasser Sullivan’s regular drivers Jack Hawksworth was out of the car…
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