IMSA Laguna SECA 2019
Let’s start this week’s five takeaways with an interesting nugget.
Sunday’s two-hour, 40-minute Monterey SportsCar Championship Powered by McLaren was the third IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race this season to run without a full-course caution. The race at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca was the second straight with all four classes to go caution-free following last month’s IMSA Road Race Showcase at Road America, while July’s GT-only round at Lime Rock Park also went green for the entire distance.
There was still plenty of action, however, with six lead changes among five different cars in the Daytona Prototype international (DPi) class, four lead changes between two cars in LMP2 and seven lead changes among four cars in GT Le Mans (GTLM). That the No. 48 Paul Miller Racing Lamborghini Huracán GT3 shared by Bryan Sellers and Corey Lewis was able to lead all 110 laps in the GT Daytona (GTD) class that featured a race-high 11 starters was impressive in its own right.
In the end, Acura Team Penske scored another 1-2 sweep in DPi with No. 6 Acura ARX-05 co-drivers Dane Cameron and Juan Pablo Montoya scoring the win ahead of the No. 7 shared by Ricky Taylor and Helio Castroneves. In GTLM, Sacramento native Joey Hand scored an emotional home-state win in the No. 66 Ford Chip Ganassi Racing Ford GT with his “German-brother-from-another-mother” Dirk Mueller, while Matt McMurry unofficially clinched the 2019 WeatherTech Championship LMP2 title in the No. 52 PR1 Mathaisen Motorsports ORECA alongside co-driver Dalton Kellett.
