Long Beach USC: Taylor brothers defeat Ganassi's Hand and Pruett
Ricky and Jordan Taylor won the Tudor United SportsCar Championship race on the streets of Long Beach, seeing off the challenge of Ganassi's Scott Pruett and Joey Hand
After starting from the front of the pack, Ricky Taylor led Pruett through the first stint and opened up a two-second advantage before pitting to hand over to his brother.
The Ganassi car was able to remain out on track for another couple of laps, and that combined with quick driver change enabled Hand to emerge ahead of the Wayne Taylor Racing entry.
Jordan Taylor was quickly up to speed at the start of his stint though and reclaimed the lead with a bold dive down the inside of Hand at Turn 1.
The lead gap fluctuated over the remaining 40 minutes but Hand couldn't get back within striking distance and Jordan Taylor took victory by a final margin of three seconds.
The Spirit of Daytona car of Michael Valiante and Richard Westbrook held a relatively quiet third place before and after the pitstop sequence.
Christian Fittipaldi and Joao Barbosa spent most of the race running in fourth for Action Express Racing, but Barbosa succumbed to the sister entry of Eric Curran/Dane Cameron late on as car issues set in.
The Michael Shank Racing Ligier of John Pew and Oswaldo Negri completed the top six.
BMW WINS GTLM
In GTLM, Giancarlo Fisichella shot through into the lead at the start of the race in the Risi Ferrari ahead of the front-row sharing BMWs, and the three-time Formula 1 grand prix winner was able to keep the two Z4s at bay until the pitstops.
Pierre Kaffer joined the race in the Ferrari with a decent lead, while the #25 BMW of Bill Auberlen and Dirk Werner slipped to fourth during the stops behind the sister #24 car of John Edwards and Lucas Luhr and the #3 Corvette of Jan Magnussen and Antonio Garcia.
Werner was able to make quick work of Garcia and Luhr however and set about closing the eight-second gap to Kaffer with half an hour to go.
With just over 10 minutes left, he had eliminated Kaffer's advantage and pulled off a class-winning overtake.
Luhr lost third when he ran deep in the closing minutes, allowing both Garcia and Frederic Makowiecki's #911 Porsche through.
The sister #912 car hit trouble at the first corner of the race, when Richard Lietz found himself squeezed between the #4 Corvette of Oliver Gavin and the outside wall, sustaining damage to the front-right corner of his car.
RESULTS - 78 LAPS:
Pos | Class | Driver | Team | Car | Gap |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | P | R.Taylor, J.Taylor | Wayne Taylor Racing | Corvette/Chevrolet | 1h40m59.571s |
2 | P | J.Hand, S.Pruett | Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates | Riley/Ford | 3.300s |
3 | P | R.Westbrook, M.Valiante | visitflorida.com Racing | Corvette/Chevrolet | 18.242s |
4 | P | E.Curran, D.Cameron | Action Express Racing | Corvette/Chevrolet | 21.864s |
5 | P | J.Barbosa, C.Fittipaldi | Action Express Racing | Corvette/Chevrolet | 50.468s |
6 | P | J.Pew, O.Negri | Michael Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian | Ligier/HPD | 2 Laps |
7 | GTLM | B.Auberlen, D.Werner | BMW Team RLL | BMW | 2 Laps |
8 | GTLM | P.Kaffer, G.Fisichella | Risi Competizione | Ferrari | 2 Laps |
9 | GTLM | J.Magnussen, A.Garcia | Corvette Racing | Chevrolet | 3 Laps |
10 | GTLM | P.Pilet, F.Makowiecki | Porsche North America | Porsche | 3 Laps |
11 | GTLM | J.M.Edwards, L.Luhr | BMW Team RLL | BMW | 3 Laps |
12 | GTLM | B.Sellers, W.Henzler | Team Falken Tire | Porsche | 3 Laps |
13 | P | T.Long, J.Miller | Speedsource | Mazda | 3 Laps |
14 | GTLM | O.Gavin, T.Milner | Corvette Racing | Chevrolet | 4 Laps |
15 | P | T.Nunez, J.Bomarito | Speedsource | Mazda | 4 Laps |
16 | GTLM | R.Lietz, J.Bergmeister | Porsche North America | Porsche | 18 Laps |
17 | P | M.Rojas, K.Legge | Claro / TracFone DeltaWing Racing | DeltaWing/Elan | Not running |
Be part of the Autosport community
Join the conversationShare Or Save This Story
Subscribe and access Autosport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
Top Comments