Let battle commence at penultimate round of the Michelin Pilot Challenge at VIR
Tuesday, October 05, 2021
With the GT cars of the IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championship at the Virginia International Raceway this weekend, that also means that we have another two-hour race to look forward to from the combined GT4/TCR grid of the Michelin Pilot Challenge as they also race out their penultimate round of the 2021 season.
Three Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT4’s will make the trip to Virginia with the #7 Volt Racing with Archangel AMR of Alan Brynjolfsson and Trent Hindman being the only one of these three cars to have entered each round so far to lay P8 overall in their GS class.
Albeit three hundred points behind the Championship leading car, there remains seven hundred points still available over the final two rounds so all is certainly not lost although the BMW M4 GT4 remains a dominant force in IMSA racing at the moment so the battle remains tough for them.
Having skipped the last round of the series at Laguna Seca, the #23 Notlad Racing with RS1 Aston Martin of Pat Gallagher and Stevan McAleer also makes a return to their half-season efforts after their podium finishing races at Lime Rock Park and Road America in July and August respectively.
Having skipped the last round of the series at Laguna Seca, the #23 Notlad Racing with RS1 Aston Martin of Pat Gallagher and Stevan McAleer also makes a return to their half-season efforts after their podium finishing races at Lime Rock Park and Road America in July and August respectively.
Having only joined the season halfway through, they obviously don’t have enough points for any Championship charge, but they have made both their car’s and their own abilities highly noticeable in the rounds that they have raced in so far, so their orange Aston Martin should look fantastic thundering around the picturesque 3.27-mile circuit.
Finally, we see the return of the #09 Stoner Car Care with Automatic Racing AMR of Rob Ecklin and Ramin Abdolvahabi after both guys also stepped aside last time out at Laguna Seca due to personal commitments, where they were replaced in the teams #99 car by the two debuting Asian arena drivers of Anderson Tanoto and Weiron Tan. Unfortunately for these guys, contact into turn 1 near the halfway stage of that race put them out despite some impressive pace in their first-time experience of the circuit and car together.
The two-hour Michelin Pilot Challenge race for the 35-car grid will take place at 14:10Hrs (local) on Sunday.
Photo credits – IMSA / CSJ Motorsport / F Lagunas / Teams
