BRASELTON, Ga. — US RaceTronics’ Steven Aghakhani and FASTMD Racing with Remstar’s Jagger Jones split the two IMSA VP Racing SportsCar Challenge races at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta. For Aghakhani, it was his fourth win of the year, while Jones claimed his eighth.
Race No. 1
Jagger Jones started from the pole in his Duqueine M30-D08-Nissan, but there was trouble on the start. Jones and Steven Aghakhani had some casual contact coming down the hill to the start, but Jones made the mistake of getting out of line prior to the start-finish line.
In IMSA competition, staying in line until the start-finish line is quite stringently enforced. However, the investigation wasn’t immediate. The officials chose to look at it immediately after the race.
Jones was able to pull away from Aghakhani fairly quickly, eventually opening up an advantage of nearly 10 seconds. That lead went away when the caution came out for the stalled Aston Martin of Frank DePew.
Despite the whole field closing back up together, Jones was able to drive away and take the win on the road by 4.353 seconds. However, after the checkered flag, IMSA assessed a 10-second penalty on Jones for changing lanes on the initial start of the race.
As a result, Aghakhani ascended to the race victory, his fourth of the year. The official margin of victory was 4.936 seconds over GEBHARDT Intralogistics Motorsports’ Markus Pommer. Pommer’s teammate Valentino Catalano was third, while Jones was forced to settle for fourth. Escuderia ABRO’s Miguel Villagomez was fifth.
By virtue of starting the race, Agahkhani clinched the LMP3 championship. Jones was his primary competition all year, but he missed the opening two races in Daytona back in January. Aghakhani won both of those races and staked himself a 700-point head start.
In the GSX class, the circumstances were similar. KohR Motorsports’ Luca Mars clinched the championship by simply starting the race. That said, he didn’t take the opportunity to score another victory lightly.
Mars was never seriously challenged in the 45-minute race en route to his sixth win of the year and third in a row. His margin of victory was 8.749 seconds over Split Decision Motorsports’ Patrick Wilmot. Kingpin Racing’s Tyler Hoffman recovered from having all of his times from qualifying Wednesday deleted due to the car being touched in the pit lane to finish third. AutoTechnic Racing’s Mark Brummond was fourth, while Stephen…
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