Ricky Taylor made a Turn 1 pass for the lead on Christian Fittipaldi at the start of Saturday’s Bubba Burger Sports Car Grand Prix that proved to be the race-winning one, as he and his brother Jordan Taylor co-drove the No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing Corvette DP to victory on the streets of Long Beach for the second year in a row.
The win was the first of the season for WTR and the Taylor brothers who led a top-three Corvette DP sweep of the Prototype class podium in the 100-minute IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race.
The pole-winning No. 5 Action Express Racing Corvette DP of Joao Barbosa and Fittipaldi finished second, 2.958 seconds behind the race winners.
Third place went to the No. 31 Action Express Racing Corvette DP of Eric Curran and Dane Cameron.
The top-five was completed by the SpeedSource-run Mazda Prototypes of No. 70 Tom Long and Joel Miller in fourth and the No. 55 of Jonathan Bomarito and Tristan Nunez in fifth.
Both Mazdas ran competitively all weekend with Long running a race-high second in the opening laps behind Ricky Taylor.
In the Prototype Challenge class, Misha Goikhberg and Stephen Simpson co-drove the No. 85 JDC-Miller Motorsports Oreca FLM09 to a convincing pole-to-checkered flag victory.
Renger van der Zande and Alex Popow finished second in the No. 8 Starworks Motorsport entry.
Third in PC went to the No. 38 Performance Tech Motorsports car of James French and Kyle Marcelli despite a hard impact with the wall entering the Seaside Way straight on the checkered flag lap. Marcelli was uninjured in the incident.
CORE autosport was another car to suffer an incident, with contact between a GT car sending Jon Bennett into the wall early in the race and Colin Braun stopping on course shortly after due to the damage.
It brought out the only full-course caution of the race.
Nick Tandy steered clear of an incident between the race leaders with just minutes left on the clock and drove the N0. 911 Porsche North America Porsche 911 RSR to the GTLM class victory.
Co-driving with reigning IMSA class champion Patrick Pilet, Tandy led only the final four laps of the 100-minute race, scoring the first victory for Porsche North America in the 2016 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
Running third at the time, Tandy slipped through for the class win when his teammate Fred Makowiecki, in second place in the No. 912 Porsche 911 RSR, came together with the race-leading Corvette C7.R of Tommy Milner in Long Beach’s famous hairpin.
Makowiecki was assessed a penalty for avoidable contact but never served it as he limped the No. 912 car back to the pits with front end damage and retired.
Milner, co-driving with Oliver Gavin, recovered from the contact incident to finish second for Corvette Racing.
Giancarlo Fisichella and Toni Vilander finished third in the Risi Competizione Ferrari 488 GTE, reaching the Long Beach GTLM podium for the second year in a row.
The No. 67 Ford Chip Ganassi Racing Ford GT of Richard Westbrook and Ryan Briscoe rebounded from Friday morning’s practice fire to finish fourth in class.
The pole-sitting No. 25 BMW Team RLL BMW M6 GTLM, which led the first 15 minutes of the race, finished third with Bill Auberlen and Dirk Werner co-driving.
Next up for the WeatherTech Championship is Round 4 at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, April 29 – May 1.
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