LEXINGTON, Ohio – Pole winner Alvaro Parente left little doubt about his performance Saturday at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course with a dominating win in the Pirelli World Challenge GT Sprint division.
Parente, a winner last year in his debut at Mid-Ohio, repeated the 2016 showing with a 6.857-second victory in his No. 9 K-PAX Racing McLaren 650S over Cadillac’s Michael Cooper and Johnny O’Connell in a 36-lap wire-to-wire win, his third this year in the GT Sprint division.
The personable Portugese McLaren factory driver nipped Cooper and O’Connell in Friday’s qualifying but Saturday’s session was a completely different performance with Parente consistently extending his advantage through the 50-minute race. Even after a full course yellow flag on lap 26, Parente jumped to a solid margin immediately after the re-start and never looked back.
“Definitely our car works very well on this track,” said Parente. “Saturday’s super close qualifying session, I put a lot in quite early in the session. Then I went back out and managed to improve my lap time in a good battle for pole position. Today, we knew the tires wouldn’t come in the first couple of laps so the race would be quite tricky. It’s just the nature of this track for the tires to take a while to start working properly. So, I knew I had to work them in very hard on those first two or three laps and then I had to manage the race after that and try to get a good start, clean through the first three corners.
“I like the track a lot. It has its own characteristics. It’s not a long track, the middle sector is very interesting. And then when your car works well, like other places, you’re always going to enjoy it a little more. This track has its own characteristics, you have to know it well to take the most advantage of it and, my car works very well here so I’m really happy with the result.”
Cooper, a 2016 Mid-Ohio GT race winner, drove a strong race in his No. 8 Cadillac Racing Cadillac ATS-V.R. sports car, taking the runner-up slot over his teammate O’Connell, the four-time GT champion in the No. 3 Cadillac Racing Cadillac ATS-V.R.
Fourth went to Parente’s K-PAX Racing teammate, Bryan Sellers after a stellar start from his sixth starting position. Rounding out the top-five was current GT Sprint point leader Patrick Long .
The battle for the GTA win saw Road America double winner James Sofronas edging last year’s Mid-Ohio double winner Michael Schein, the GTA pole winner.
Sofronas drove his No. 14 GMG Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R to the lead into the first turn and watched Schein’s No. 16 Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R pressure him the entire 50 minutes before taking the victory by .235 of a second. Third in GTA Saturday was veteran sports car racer Tim Pappas.
Scoring top honors in the GT Cup class was Japan’s Yuki Harata in the No. 55 Dream Racing Motorsports Lamborghini Huracan Super Trofeo sports car.
Source : speedsport.com
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