Smooge Racing Wins Indianapolis GT4 America Race No. 1

Smooge Racing’s Corey Lewis was able to run down and take the overall lead from ACI Motorsports’ Curt Swearingin with 15 minutes to go Saturday morning (Oct. 5). From there, Lewis pulled away to win Pirelli GT4 America SprintX Race No. 1 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway with teammate Tyler Gonzalez. It is Gonzalez’s second win of the year and Lewis’ first.

Lewis and Gonzalez’s margin of victory was 5.172 seconds over Random Vandals Racing’s Kevin Boehm and Kenton Koch. Rennsport One’s John Capestro-Dubets and Eric Filgueiras were third, then Precision Racing LA’s Terry Borcheller and Ryan Eversley. VPX Motorsports’ Danny Dyszelski and Cayden Goodridge were fifth.

The top-three finishers were the top-three teams in the Silver class. AutoTechnic Racing’s Zac Anderson and Colin Garrett were fourth, while The Heart of Racing’s Hannah Greenemeier and Hannah Grisham were fifth.

RENNtech Motorsports’ Matheus Leist started from the overall pole in his Mercedes, but his time at the front was short-lived. ACI Motorsports’ Kay van Berlo swept into the lead on the first lap.

Leist was able to keep up with van Berlo and once the mid-race stops started, he was able to move back in on the Porsche racer for the lead. The pass was unable to be made before the pit stops.

Once the stops were complete, Swearingin ended up in the overall lead with Auriemma giving chase. It didn’t take long for Swearingin to open up a decent advantage over the Mercedes.

Further back, the Pro-Am championship was decided in favor of ACI Motorsports when The Heart of Racing ran into two separate problems. First, the team’s pit stop to switch from Roman DeAngelis to Gray Newell was more than a second under the 108-second minimum pit lane delta. That resulted in a drive-through penalty.

Before Newell could serve the penalty, he cut his right rear tire, forcing him to limp to pit lane to get it changed. Once everything was said and done, Newell was nearly at the rear of the field. The team would ultimately finish 25th overall.

While Swearingin was able to pull away from Auriemma, he was no match for Lewis. Lewis was able to run down Swearingin for the overall lead in a hurry. It was such that Swearingin didn’t really put up much of a fight.

However, the Porsche started to drop down the order. That brought Eversley into the picture in his Supra. Eversley ran down Swearingin from multiple seconds behind and made the pass exiting the…