Paul Miller Racing’s Madison Snow was able to take the overall lead from The Heart of Racing’s Ross Gunn on the final round of pit stops Sunday (Aug. 25). From there, Snow held on to win the Michelin GT Challenge at VIR with teammate Bryan Sellers. It is their first win together in the GTD Pro class.
“It’s an overall win in GT at VIR. It’s pretty spectacular,” Snow told NBC Sports’ Matt Yocum in victory lane. “It’s going to take a while to sink in, but I’m glad that I was able to do it with my best friend Bryan [Sellers].”
Sellers and Snow’s margin of victory was 3.368 seconds over Ford Multimatic Motorsports’ Mike Rockenfeller and Harry Tincknell. Gunn and Alex Riberas were third, then Joey Hand and Dirk Mueller in the second factory Mustang. Korthoff/Preston Motorsports’ Mikael Grenier and Kenton Koch were fifth.
0The first four finishers were the top-four finishers in the GTD Pro class. Fifth in GTD Pro went to Pfaff Motorsports’ Oliver Jarvis and Marvin Kirchhoefer.
Snow started from the overall pole in his BMW and managed to open a small gap. Meanwhile, Tincknell snuck around Antonio Garcia in the first turn to take second.
For almost the entire first stint of the race, Tincknell was within a second of Snow, stalking his every move. Hand was also able to move past the Corvettes and up into third.
When the first round of stops began roughly 50 minutes into the race, a quicker pit stop for the No. 65 team allowed Mueller to jump over Rockenfeller. Unfortunately, the stop was too quick as Mueller was hit with a drive-through penalty for failing to adhere to the minimum refueling time.
Snow went for nearly a full hour before making his first pit stop in order to hand over to Sellers. The stop put Sellers out directly in front of Rockenfeller.
Meanwhile, Riberas stopped 12 laps before Snow. Quick laps from Gunn once he got in the car resulted in Gunn emerging from the sequence with a 10-second lead.
The sequence also saw some potential contenders eliminated or simply curtailed. For instance, Vasser Sullivan’s No. 14 team really didn’t have that great of a weekend at VIR. Jack Hawksworth didn’t qualify all that well and ran down the order in class early on.
Right after his first pit stop, AO Racing’s Laurin Heinrich made an aggressive move at turn 4 for position. Contact was made and Hawksworth went around.
Heinrich, the GTD Pro points leader entering Sunday, was given a…
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