LAKEVILLE, Conn. – Stevenson Motorsports recently became the first team to win both an IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge and IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race at the same racetrack on the same event weekend.
The feat was accomplished on July 8-9 at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, when the team’s new No. 57 Chevrolet Camaro GT4.R piloted by Robin Liddell and Matt Bell took the overall and Grand Sport class victory in Saturday’s Continental Tire Challenge race, followed by Andrew Davis and Lawson Aschenbach winning the GT Daytona class in Sunday’s WeatherTech Championship race aboard the No. 57 Audi R8 LMS GT3.
Stevenson also was the last team to accomplish a similar feat, winning both the Continental Tire Challenge and Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series races at Road Atlanta in 2013. Turner Motorsport also has the Continental Tire Challenge-Rolex Series double on its racing résumé.
“Obviously, you’ve got to run two cars to win one in each class, which we haven’t done in a while,” said Stevenson Motorsports Team Manager Mike Johnson. “With the Audi, it’s amazing how many times we’ve just been so close.
“With the Camaro, it was absolutely great,” said Johnson. “We always joked, saying, ‘As soon as we win one with the Camaro, the Audi’s going to win one right afterward.’ We just didn’t know it was going to be 24 hours later.”
Both teams have a chance to repeat their victory this Saturday at Lime Rock Park.
Johnson and the Stevenson team feel like they’ve got a strong opportunity to play a starring role in both races and have another great weekend at Lime Rock.
“From a GS standpoint, Pratt & Miller and Chevrolet have always built a great car for Lime Rock,” Johnson said. ”It makes a lot of downforce, it’s got good power coming off turns and excellent braking.”
“Then, an Audi won the Lime Rock GTD race last year and we had a very fast Audi last year,” he added. “In GTD, I think we feel really strong with the car. It can make a lot of downforce.”
Johnson pointed out a few occasions recently, over the past couple of years since the team’s 2015 Continental Tire Challenge GS-championship winning season and subsequent hiatus from the series until the introduction of the new Camaro GT4.R in May at Circuit of The Americas, where one or more of those hundred things didn’t go exactly right.
“You’ve got to remember that Mosport came a week after we had a double DNF at Watkins Glen,” he said. “We had the motor fail with 20 minutes to go in one car and we had a tire problem with three minutes to go in the Audi.”
“When you keep having these weekends just fall apart at the last minute on you, it’s just so devastating,” he continued. “At Detroit, again we were leading, got a 20-second lead, full-course yellow, come out of the pits in fourth and have an axle fail with 20 to go.
“It’s amazing how strong our team is and how John and Susan Stevenson don’t ever lose faith,” said Johnson. “When you have those double DNFs, you’re like, ‘What else can we do? We just can’t get anything to work.’ Then, bam-bam, right out of nowhere, two wins. It brings you right back to, ‘OK, we knew we could still do this.’”
Source : speedsport.com
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