Laguna Seca United SportsCar: Spirit of Daytona beats Taylor car

Westbrook, sharing the Coyote-Chevrolet Corvette with Michael Valiante, was second before the final round of pitstops but ran several laps longer than Taylor, who shared the Wayne Taylor Racing Dallara-Chevrolet Corvette with younger brother Jordan, before making his final stop.

His pace after Taylor's stop meant that he re-emerged a few car lengths ahead with 28 minutes remining having run second during the middle stages of the race.

Westbrook immediately pulled a small advantage over Taylor through his incisiveness in traffic and despite sporadically edging back up on the leader again, Taylor could not mount a challenge for the lead.

It had seemed the Taylor car was destined for victory for much of the race, although Valiante did lead the early stages after taking first place at the the start when Jordan made contact with Scott Pruett in the Chip Ganassi Racing Riley-Ford EcoBoost in Turn 1.

But Taylor reclaimed the lead on lap 15 as he and Valiante made their way through a morass of Prototype Challenge and GT machinery.

On the run to Turn 1, Valiante clipped the rear of Wolf Henzler's GTLM-class Porsche, delaying himself enough to allow Taylor to go around the outside.

Taylor started to extend his advantage before the first of two rapid-fire safety-car periods, one caused by Todd Slusher spinning and the other triggered by momentary GT Daytona-class leader Patrick Byrne going off in his Audi, mixed up the order at the front.

But it didn't take long for order to be restored, with Taylor, who remained in the car during the first round of stops, moving back into first place ahead of brief leader Tristan Nunez in the Speedsource Lola-Mazda, who had stayed out.

Westbrook, who took over from Valiante under the safety-car pitstops, quickly carved his way past Nunez and the Action Express cars of Joao Barbosa and Dane Cameron, to run second.

But the Taylors had it under control during the middle stages of the race, with Jordan handing over to older brother Ricky when he stopped with a little over an hour to go.

Taylor then made his final stop for a splash of fuel early, with the Spirit of Daytona team holding its nerve and running longer despite the risk of a safety-car period, a strategic gamble that, combined with Westbrook's strong pace, earned it a superb victory and the points lead.

The Michael Shank Racing Ligier-Honda JSP2 was the best-placed LMP2-specification car in third place.

John Pew started the car and had a solid stint before Oswaldo Negri Jr took over, climbing from sixth after the early safety-car period, passing Barbosa and Cameron along the way, but Negri didn't quite have the pace needed to trouble the top two.

The team blamed this on bodywork damage suffered at a restart when Cameron made side-to-side contact with the Ligier at the exit of the hairpin, which also briefly put Negri off the track.

With the Ganassi car hitting gearbox trouble after Joey Hand took over, Action Express finished fourth and fifth with Barbosa, sharing with Christian Fittipaldi, ahead of the Cameron/Eric Curran machine.

The only other car in the Prototype category to have a clean enough race to be near the front was the Speedsource car of Nunez and Jonathan Bomarito, which finished seventh overall.

That put it behind the victorious Prototype Challenge machine, the RSR Racing entry of Chris Cumming and Bruno Junqueira.

Cumming drove superbly to hold the class lead from pole position, handing over to his team-mate with just under an hour remaining. The Brazilian had enough fuel to make it to the end and beat the CORE Autosport entry of Colin Braun and Jon Bennett to victory.

The BMW Z4 GTE dominated GTLM, with John Edwards and Lucas Luhr combining to lead home the similar machine of Bill Auberlen and Dirk Werner.

The CORE-run Porsche North America car of Michael Christensen and Patrick Pilet finished third, and Christensen also finished fifth in class in the sister car, which he shared with Jorg Bergmeister.

The Park Place Motorsports Porsche 911 GT America of Patrick Lindsey and Spencer Pumpelly won the GT Daytona class by less than four seconds from the Paul Miller Racing Audi of Christopher Haase and Dion von Moltke.

RESULTS - 112 LAPS: