GRANTSVILLE, Utah – The Italian team of Daniel Mancinelli and Niccolo Schiro captured Sunday’s Pirelli World Challenge SprintX 60-minute feature at the Utah Motorsports Campus.
Driving the No. 31 TR3 Racing/The Collection/Italian Shoemaker Ferrari 488 GT3, Schiro jumped to the lead from the pole Sunday and paced the 31-car field in the first 11 laps around the 3.048-mile, 14-turn road circuit. On 12th lap, Schiro pitted with a 4.3-second lead and handed the Ferrari off to Mancinelli, the VIR SprintX race winner.
A late race full-course caution period left Mancinelli in the lead of the event with Ryan Eversley, Patrick Long, Michael Cooper, Alvaro Parente, Ricky Taylor, Bryan Sellers and Ryan Dalziel all set to make for a three-lap dash to the finish of the one-hour competition.
In the end, Mancinelli fought off Eversley in turn one at the restart of lap 24 and went on to score a .969 of a second win over the No. 43 RealTime Racing Acura of Eversley and Tom Dyer. The victory for the No. 31 Ferrari was the second in SprintX action this year and Mancinelli is the first driver to repeat in SprintX this year. Mancinelli teamed with Andrea Montermini to captured the Virginia Int’l Raceway round last April.
“We had a strategy to pit early and this was a great choice by the team because it ended up working out well for us,” said Mancinelli. “There was quite a lot of traffic in front of Niccolo so he decided to pull the car inside early when the pit window opened. We were the first car into the pits, and then I was able to come back into a clear track and push hard for two laps. At the second caution, the Acura was on my exhaust and he tried to pass because they were so good in the straights but I closed the door. He tried to get on the inside and I went outside, then the next corner he was right next to me but left me proper racing room. From there, I put in two laps that were fast like qualifying laps and that allowed me to take the victory for the team who gave me the car in perfect condition. This circuit is fun because it’s wider than others and you’re able to go two-to-three cars side-by-side and that makes it fun and exciting for the viewers.”
“We knew that the Acura (NSX) was very fast on the straight,” said Schiro. “It was very important for us to keep the first position at the first corner. We knew we had a really good pace and that we could manage it, so my race went as planned. When we handed it over to Daniel (Mancinelli) we were a little nervous because of all the cautions and re-starts. It wasn’t easy. Congratulations to everybody. Thanks to the guys at TR3 Racing for this opportunity for me to race in America.”
Eversley and Dyer were pleased with the performance of their No. 32 RealTime Racing Acura NSX GT3 Sunday despite taking runner-up.
“One of the things I’m really proud of is the development of this Acura across the board,” said Eversley. “Everybody at HPD putting in countless hours; Mike Shank Racing and, obviously, RealTime Racing have collaborated so well. Actually, there are about five teams that collaborate on this program around the country, and it’s a really great program. But today we executed perfectly. I don’t think we really had anything for the Ferrari, especially once they got going. At least the car is in one piece, we got great points, took fifth yesterday and second place today.”
“It was a definite improvement from yesterday,” said Dyer. “We made some adjustments overnight and they worked as well as we hoped. We got a good start, had a nice little battle back and forth with my teammate (Mark Wilkins) but it was great. Racing with Mark is always awesome. It’s clean and we race each other hard, but always keep it clean. Maybe if we had a little less yellow (flags), we could have fought the yellow car (Schiro/Mancinelli) a little harder but that’s the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.”
Third went to Cooper and Jordan Taylor followed by Parente and Ben Barnicoat, Ricky Taylor and Johnny O’Connell and Long and Jorg Bergmeister.
In the Pro/Am category, GTA point leader James Sofronas and Mathieu Jaminet scored the victory. Finishing out the Pro/Am podium was Ricardo Sanchez and Frankie Montecalvo and Tim Pappas and Jeroen Bleekemolen.
Additional class winners in the SprintX division Sunday at Utah Motorsports Campus were Henrique Cisneros and Jonathon Ziegelman in Am/Am; Alessandro Bressan and Yuki Harata in GT Cup Pro/Am; Joe Toussaint and Cory Friedman in GT Cup Am/Am; Adam Merzon and Trent Hindman in GTS Pro/Am; and Jason Hart and Matt Travis in GTS Am/Am.
Source : speedsport.com
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