CRP Racing/Daskalos Motorsports’ Jason Daskalos led flag-to-flag from pole Saturday (April 6) to win GT America powered by AWS Race No. 1 from Sonoma Raceway. It is the second straight year that Daskalos has won the GT America season opener, having pulled off the feat last year on the Streets of St. Petersburg.
Daskalos’ margin of victory was 4.306 seconds over the Audi of SKI Autosports’ Johnny O’Connell. CrowdStrike Racing by Riley’s George Kurtz was third, then GMG Racing’s James Sofronas was fourth on the road.
In the closing laps, Sofronas was battling for fourth against Turner Motorsport’s Justin Rothberg for fourth. With three minutes to go, contact was made in turn 7, resulting in Rothberg spinning out.
Sofronas was hit with a drive-through penalty for the incident. Since the penalty was assessed after the checkered flag came out, it was converted to a time penalty.
As a result, that dropped Sofronas from fourth to eighth. As a result, Mishumotors’ Mirco Schultis was credited with fourth, while Chouest-Povoledo Raicng’s Ross Chouest was fifth.
Flying Lizard Motorsports’ Elias Sabo was fastest in practice Saturday morning, but chose to withdraw from GT America in order to focus on Fanatec GT World Challenge America powered by AWS. As a result, Daskalos started from the overall pole in his Mercedes-AMG GT3.
The start was a bit ragged. Tim Savage hit the wall on the frontstretch before even reaching the start-finish line, while Sofronas nearly went off-course in his Audi.
CrowdStrike Racing by Riley’s George Kurtz was able to get past Johnny O’Connell on the first lap to take second, then immediately pressured Daskalos for the lead. Daskalos was able to hold off Kurtz until they approached the rear of the GT4 field. The slower traffic allowed Daskalos to pull away again.
Kurtz was eventually able to get all the way back up to Daskalos’ rear bumper before he faded greatly in the closing laps. That allowed O’Connell to take second away.
While Kurtz dropping gave Daskalos a decent lead, he did not back off at all. He turned in the fastest second sector of the race on the final lap en route to victory.
TPC Racing’s Aaron Farhadi started on the GT2 pole in his Lamborghini. He was able to take advantage of Savage’s issues to put the Aston Martin between himself and his immediate competitors.
The race for GT2 essentially ended nine minutes into the race. Farhadi had a…
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