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Fittipaldi And Barbosa Score In The Sahlen’s Six Hours Of The Glen

Winning action Express Racing Corvette negotiates Turn 7 in traffic. [Joe Jennings Photo]

Winning action Express Racing Corvette negotiates Turn 7 in traffic. [Joe Jennings Photo]

By Joe Jennings

Watkins Glen, N. Y. – Christian Fittipaldi and Joao Barbosa put their Action Express Corvette DP in front when it counted, and they were able to score a victory in the Sahlen’s Six Hours of the Glen, the third longest race of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season.

In winning, they scored their sixth WTSCC victory and the first time in 2016. Fittipaldi won for second time here and Barbosa took his third here. They also took over sole possession of the Prototype point lead by 7 points.

“It was a very strong race for us from lap one on. We pretty much drove on the limit all the time and admit that the reason our cars are here.is because of pure race-craft,” Fittipaldi said. “We were very good with our pit stops and in traffic, but slower than the P2 cars.”

Added Barbosa, “This was one of the fastest pace races that I have been involved with in a while. Our car was really good, and the changes we made after qualifying really hit it. This team has been working very hard on a win. Once I got into clean air, I was able to get an edge. It was a fun race.”

Second place in another Action Express Corvette DP was one-time race leaders Dane Cameron and Eric Curran. The finish was close with the margin of victory was a mere .709 seconds after 197 laps of racing around the recently repaved 3.4-mile road course.

Olivier Pla, Ozz Negri and John Pew pushed the Michael Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian Ligier JS P2 Honda HPD to a hard- fought third place, finishing 1.048 seconds behind the overall winners.

Nine Prototypes made up the starting field with a pair of Mazda’s and the Rolex24 and 12 Hours of Sebring winning Tequila Patron Ligier Honda excelling until being sidelined with issues late in the event.

Ten GTLM class entries lived up to expectations with two Ford Chip Ganassi Racing GT’s finishing first and second.

Richard Westbrook and new father Ryan Briscoe copped the class win and doing so for the second consecutive race. (Nicole Briscoe delivered their second daughter a day ago with her husband at her side.)

“It has been a crazy weekend for me,” Briscoe stated, staying in touch with the team while at a Connecticut hospital.

“Our confidence is so high,” noted Westbrook, who has frequented victory lane at the Glen. “This Ford camp is amazing. We had a great battle with the BMW and at the end, our car seemed to get a little bit stronger. It was a really, really good race for us.”

Joey Hand and Dirk Muller took over the runner-up spot in the closing minutes with Hand wrestling the position away from the BMW M6 of Bill Auberlen and Dirk Werner.

In the PC class, Renger van der Zande and Alex Popow drove their Starworks Motorsport ORECA to the class victory,

The GTD class win went to the Scuderia Corsa Ferrari 488 GT3 of Christina Nielsen, Jeff Segal and Alessandro Balzan.

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