{"id":80147,"date":"2021-06-17T13:13:52","date_gmt":"2021-06-17T20:13:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=80147"},"modified":"2021-06-17T13:28:40","modified_gmt":"2021-06-17T20:28:40","slug":"tight-imsa-weathertech-battles-in-detroit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/tight-imsa-weathertech-battles-in-detroit\/","title":{"rendered":"Tight IMSA WeatherTech Battles in Detroit"},"content":{"rendered":"
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No. 01 Cadillac DPi race winners<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

IMSA held its fourth WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race of the 2021 season at The Raceway at Belle Isle the second weekend of June. To date the series has held two endurance contests – the Rolex 24 at Daytona and the Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring, together with two sprint races, at Mid-Ohio and in Detroit.<\/p>\n

The Chevrolet Sports Car Classic at Detroit represented one of the shortest races of the season at 100 minutes and that was an optimal occurrence, as the race was pushed back from its original start time Saturday afternoon, when a massive shunt in the NTT IndyCar Series contest that preceded it necessitated a great deal of wall repositioning and repair.<\/p>\n

Accentuating their return to the IMSA prototype championship, Chip Ganassi Racing\u2019s No. 01 Cadillac DPi earned the pole position and won the race, giving team owner Chip Ganassi an excellent day of racing, as his team triumphed in the earlier INDYCAR race with first-time winner Marcus Ericsson.<\/p>\n

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Van der Zande and Magnussen celebrate Photo: IMSA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In similar fashion to the race that came before the IMSA contest on the 2.35-mile, 14-corner Belle Isle racetrack, the competition was stopped by a yellow (not red) flag with only a few laps remaining. There were just under three minutes remaining on the clock when green flags flew and Renger Van der Zande was able to hold off the No. 31 Whelen Cadillac DPi to take the win, by a scant 0.573 seconds. The Wayne Taylor Racing Acura ARX-05 of Felipe Nasr and Ricky Taylor finished third and continue to lead the championship by 71 points over the No. 55 Mazda RT24-P, which finished fourth on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Ganassi put this team together rather late in the going, but was never lacking for talented drivers to race for him. This was the first race win for pole man Kevin Magnussen since his Renault 3.5-series tally of five wins in 2013. \u201cIt feels great,\u201d Magnussen said. \u201cThe whole season we\u2019ve been fast but we just haven\u2019t been able to get to the end in the lead. We\u2019ve led a lot of laps this year; finally, we led the right lap!\u201d<\/p>\n

Van der Zande, who brought the No. 01 home to the checkered flags said, \u201cWe got it together. I\u2019m just super proud of the whole team, how they managed it. I think we can only get better from here,\u201d he declared. \u201cWe\u2019ve been a little bit unlucky and made some small mistakes as well, but here we are. This is our first win and we can build from here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ganassi, who always says, \u201cI like winners\u201d had plenty to celebrate on Saturday as he gained his latest pair of wins, giving him more than 230 victories in 31 years, competing in NASCAR, INDYCAR and the changing iterations of sports car racing. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s any secret that this [IMSA] team was put together at the last minute in the fall of last year,\u201d Ganassi said. \u201cAfter what we\u2019d all been through in 2020, we really didn\u2019t know where we were at going forward. It\u2019s really special to have an availability of talent \u2026 that want to come drive for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Heart of Racing GTD winners-<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There was some turmoil in the GTD ranks as the No. 39 Audi LMS GT3 had its apparent victory removed and was relegated to the rear of the 20-car field for a fuel delivery system penalty (they refueled too quickly). That elevated the No. 23 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin to the top spot on the podium. This win gave Aston Martin its first IMSA WeatherTech victory, with Ross Gunn and Roman De Angelis, the latter a Canadian who grew up close to the Belle Isle track.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo say that we won the Detroit Grand Prix and that the Heart of Racing finally won their first race with the Aston Martin is just unbelievable,\u201d de Angelis said. \u201cWhether you take it after the race or during the race, it\u2019s always going to say that we won the Detroit Grand Prix in 2021. I\u2019ve always dreamt about winning an IMSA race, let alone competing in one! It\u2019s so amazing to do it in front of pretty much my home crowd.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Corvette Racing No. 4 GTLM winners<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

GTLM were competing at Detroit for the first time since 2008 but no points were awarded, as it was simply the two Corvette C8.Rs fighting amongst themselves. Since the 24 Hours of Le Mans was postponed to August this year, due to the pandemic, Corvette Racing elected to compete for the joy of it – and for future race preparation. This squad didn\u2019t compete at Mid-Ohio so it\u2019s had a mighty long layoff since Sebring in mid-March.<\/p>\n

Still, they battled like there were points and glory on offer, with the No. 4 of Nick Tandy and Tommy Milner beating the No. 3 of Jordan Taylor and Antonio Garcia across the line by a razor-thin 0.226 seconds. \u201cThe whole point of coming here was to showcase these Corvettes,\u201d Milner said. \u201cThis team hasn\u2019t been here since 2008, so it was a great opportunity to showcase Corvette Racing to all the engineers and to a lot of the people who work for Corvette Racing.\u201d In addition, they gained information that could be useful when the WeatherTech series goes to Long Beach in September, as this was its first time on a street circuit.<\/p>\n

The WeatherTech SportsCar Championship resumes with two races at Watkins Glen International: the Sahlen\u2019s Six Hours of The Glen takes place June 24-27 while the WeatherTech 240 takes place a week later at the same track.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

IMSA held its fourth WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race of the 2021 season at The Raceway at Belle Isle the second weekend of June.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":80148,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17,3470,3699,5029],"tags":[5614,395,41,1632],"class_list":["post-80147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guest-column","category-news","category-other-racing","category-racing","tag-anne-proffit","tag-imsa","tag-news","tag-racing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/No.-1-Cadillac-DPi-race-winners-min-e1623960820314.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-kQH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80147"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80153,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80147\/revisions\/80153"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}