Cameron, Curran take Action Express Corvette to victory at Belle Isle

By foxsports
Published

An Action Express Racing Corvette DP has won Saturday's Chevrolet Sports Car Classic, but not the pole-sitting and defending TUDOR United SportsCar Championship title-winning No. 5 car driven by Christian Fittipaldi and Joao Barbosa.

Instead, their teammates, Dane Cameron and Eric Curran in the No. 31 Whelen Engineering-backed car, have secured their first win together as teammates in Saturday's 100-minute race.

Cameron made a pass of Jordan Taylor with 28 minutes remaining, then held off a late charge from Barbosa in the No. 5 Mustang Sampling-backed car to secure the win.

Barbosa was likely to come home in second, but spun at Turn 3 on the final lap, which promoted the No. 60 Michael Shank Racing Ligier JS P2 Honda of Ozz Negri and John Pew to a surprise second place finish.

The No. 5 car made it home in third despite the last lap spin.

Neither the No. 01 Chip Ganassi Racing Riley-Ford nor No. 90 VisitFlorida.com Racing Corvette DP threatened for the win, and both had an incident during the race.

Joey Hand in the No. 01 car contacted Ozz Negri in the No. 60 car entering Turn 5, while the No. 90 car of Richard Westbrook had a spin exiting Turn 3.

The Starworks Motorsport Oreca FLM09 of Renger van der Zande and Mirco Schultis won in Prototype Challenge after a battle of survival.

Van der Zande made a pass on James Vance in the polesitting No. 38 Performance Tech Motorsports Oreca FLM09 after a restart and was able to streak away from there.

The No. 85 JDC/Miller Motorsports Oreca FLM09 of Stephen Simpson and Mikhail Goikhberg was second with the No. 38 car of Vance and James French third.

After a first-lap pit stop to fix the left front suspension and nose assembly, CORE autosport ended a trying weekend in fourth place, while contact between the No. 11 RSR Racing Oreca FLM09 and No. 52 PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports in Turn 1 took them both out of the race. Bruno Junqueira spun and was hit by an oncoming Tom Kimber-Smith.

Courtesy of a pit stop done several laps earlier than their rivals, the No. 23 Team Seattle/Alex Job Racing Porsche 911 GT America pair of Ian James and Mario Farnbacher leapt to the GT Daytona class lead and held it through to the finish.

The pair also won at the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring in March, but this race was not as dramatic as the finish there.

James started the No. 23 car from fifth place in class and pitted on Lap 18, four or five laps before the rest of the GTD class.

Once the pit stop cycle was completed and Farnbacher in the car, he held on until the finish by a winning margin of 2.679 seconds.

Unofficially, the No. 007 TRG-AMR Aston Martin V12 Vantage GT3, driven by James Davison and Christina Nielsen in their second race of the day, finished in second ahead of the polesitting No. 48 Paul Miller Racing Audi R8 LMS of Christopher Haase and Dion von Moltke.

The No. 22 Alex Job Racing Porsche 911 GT America and No. 73 Park Place Motorsports Porsche 911 GT America completed the top five

The No. 007 Aston Martin, No. 22 Porsche, No. 73 Porsche and No. 58 Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT America were involved in a post-race accident.

All drivers, James Davison, Leh Keen, Spencer Pumpelly and Jan Heylen, all confirmed either by themselves or via their teams that they were OK, with Heylen evaluated and released from the infield care center.