Chouest-Povoledo Racing’s Ross Chouest took the lead when CrowdStrike Racing by Riley’s George Kurtz was penalized early on. From there, he was able to hold on to win GT America powered by AWS Race No. 2 at Sonoma Raceway Sunday morning (April 7). It is his first GT America victory in the SRO3 class in only his second start.
“I had a little luck today on the start,” Chouest told SRO America’s Amanda Busick after the race. “I took advantage of that and was able to hold off some of the other guys. We’ll take this win today and build on it.”
Chouest’s margin of victory was .550 seconds over SKI Autosports’ Johnny O’Connell. GMG Racing’s James Sofronas was third, then Kurtz. GMG Racing’s Kyle Washington was fifth.
GMG Racing’s James Sofronas led the field to green in his Audi, but his advantage did not last long. Exiting turn 6, contact was made between Sofronas and Kurtz. Sofronas did a half-spin and recovered, but dropped back to sixth.
Kurtz assumed the lead as a result of the half-spin, but he was slapped with a drive-through penalty as the stewards determined that he was responsible for Sofronas’ incident. That gave the overall lead to Chouest-Povoledo Racing’s Ross Chouest.
Despite only being in his third GT3 race, Chouest seemed to adjust to his Mercedes-AMG GT3 well and opened up a three-second lead over Turner Motorsport’s Justin Rothberg. Kurtz emerged from the pits after his penalty with GT4 traffic, but pounded out quick laps to slowly move back towards the rest of the pack.
Eventually, Chouest caught lapped traffic and lost a significant amount of time. That didn’t just bring Rothberg into contention, but also O’Connell, Jason Daskalos and Sofronas.
The four drivers ran nose-to-tail until Rothberg caught the GT4 BMW of Carrus Callus Raceteam’s Nick Shanny. The pack got bunched up, allowing Sofronas to move up to third.
Rothberg then went too fast into turn 7 and went wide, allowing O’Connell to sweep past both Rothberg and Sofronas to take second. Daskalos tried to follow past into third, but contact was made. Rothberg spun and Daskalos ended up in the grass.
While Daskalos was able to resume in fourth, he was given a drive-through penalty for causing the spin. As a result, he ended up finishing seventh.
Lapped traffic allowed O’Connell to run down Chouest in the final laps. However, Chouest was able to hold on for the win.
On the final lap, Mishumotors’ Mirco…
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