Turner Motorsport’s Justin Rothberg led flag-to-flag from the overall pole Friday (Oct. 4) to win GT America powered by AWS Race No. 1 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It is Rothberg’s third win of the year and keeps him in championship contention.
Rothberg’s margin of victory was 3.167 seconds over SKI Autosports’ Johnny O’Connell. GMG Racing’s James Sofronas was third, followed by the second GMG Racing entry, a Porsche for Kyle Washington. Mishumotors’ Mirco Schultis was fifth.
Rothberg started from pole in his BMW. James Sofronas tried to make a move to Rothberg’s outside in turn 1 for the lead, but went wide and dropped back to fifth.
Rothberg was able to pull out a one-second lead over O’Connell in the opening lap. He was able to hold onto that.
Further back, O’Connell’s main championship competition, Jason Daskalos ran into the GT4 McLaren of Alan Grossberg, spinning Grossberg out in turn 10. The situation could have resulted in a penalty being given to Daskalos, but the stewards chose not to take action.
Despite avoiding a costly penalty, Daskalos didn’t seem to have the pace to stick with the leaders. As a result, he was overtaken first by Sofronas, then by Washington to drop to sixth.
In the closing laps, Daskalos’ car came to life. He was able to get back past Washington and put the pressure on Schultis for fourth.
On the final lap, things came to a head. While Rothberg was taking the win, contact was made between Daskalos and Schultis in turn 12, resulting in Schultis’ Callaway Corvette spinning out.
In this incident, Daskalos was passed by Washington, but held on to finish fifth on the road. However, SRO America stewards gave Daskalos a post-race drive-through penalty of 68 seconds for the contact.
The penalty dropped Daskalos from fifth to seventh. As a result, Daskalos’ points lead is down from 18 points to six with one race remaining. Rothberg is only 14 points back as well. That margin is small enough that the only way Daskalos would be able to guarantee the championship would be to win on Sunday.
In GT4, Rotek Racing’s Isaac Sherman, who has already clinched the championship, led the field to green in his Porsche. It didn’t take long for Sherman to pull away from the rest of the class once again. 14 minutes into the race, Sherman had a six-second lead over ACI Motorsports’ Curt Swearingin.
While Sherman ran away from the pack, Swearingin ended up in a duel…
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