CRP Racing’s Jason Daskalos was able to snatch the lead away from GMG Racing’s James Sofronas with nine minutes remaining. From there, Daskalos was able to hold on to win his fourth GT America race of 2024.
“I only wanted to pick up one position on the first lap, but I picked up three, which was amazing,” Daskalos said after the race. “CRP [Racing] guys gave me a great race car today.”
Daskalos’ margin of victory was 9.593 seconds over SKI Autosports’ Johnny O’Connell. CrowdStrike Racing by Riley’s George Kurtz was third, then Sofronas. Turner Motorsport’s Justin Rothberg was fifth.
O’Connell led the field to green Saturday afternoon and outdragged Sofronas to turn 1. However, the California-based veteran didn’t just settle in and ride. Sofronas got a good draft off of O’Connell and managed to take the lead away under braking for turn 12 on the first lap.
Daskalos started in sixth and quickly made his way to the front. By the end of the first lap, he was able to get past O’Connell to take second.
Once there, he ran down Sofronas fairly quickly, then dropped back into a rhythm. Then, bits started falling off of Sofronas’ car.
it started off with just a small piece of bodywork. Later, the whole rear diffuser on Sofronas’ Audi R8 LMS GT3 came loose, killing his downforce.
The lack of downforce allowed Daskalos to run Sofronas back down and take the lead with nine minutes remaining in turn 11. The lack of downforce on Sofronas’ Audi proceeded to benefit him as he was able to come back on Daskalos on the long backstretch. However, he went wide at turn 12, allowing Daskalos to keep the lead.
Kurtz was able to run both drivers down as they battled. As a result, he was able to slip inside of Sofronas at turn 20 to take second half a lap after Daskalos took the lead.
Kurtz then ran down Daskalos and tried to take the overall lead. However, the CrowdStrike Mercedes slowed suddenly on the final lap. That was more than enough for Daskalos to take the victory.
On the final lap, Ross Chouest crashed his Mercedes exiting turn 9, extensively damaging the car. The Chouest-Povoledo Racing team is using the same car for both GT America powered by AWS and Fanatec GT World Challenge America powered by AWS, so if the car cannot be repaired quickly, the team will have a double DNS on Sunday.
In addition, Kurtz’s car suddenly slowed in the second half of the final lap. What was a two-second deficit…
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