The IMSA visit to Indianapolis Motor Speedway next weekend also brings along the supporting Michelin Pilot Challenge Series for what will also be their penultimate round to their season featuring another bumper forty-four car entry and another increase in Aston Martin Racing powered participation.
At a circuit well suited to modern GT4 race cars last time out, the inter AMR powered results left a little to be desired after one’s race was lost to crew and team indiscipline (resulting in repeated penalties, one was sidelined through technical difficulties and two more were involved in a ‘blue on blue’ incident that saw the victim spun around and the perpetrator penalised with a time penalty at the end of the race.
For what was looking to be another decent performance from at least the latter two entries sadly turned into nothing although the two debuting CSM Motorsport Aston Martin crews did at least finish at their first time of asking!
Now, all of those teams and crews are back for some more from the IMS as well as a seventh AMT Vantage GT4 from a team and crew not seen since the start of the season as Christine Sloss makes a return with her #10 car. Last time out she was supported by the Van der Steur team, but they have since been taken over by the YRB Racing Car Blanche team as she is now being listed under the RaceWife Racing banner (??) alongside co-driver Glenn McGee for their bronze cup entry.
The #4 Medusa Motorsport AMR team return despite their struggles on track but Athan Sterling’s name is again missing from the family run team after his concussion injury sustained at the Road America event. His place was taken at VIR by Jacob Loomis.
####UPDATE - Athan Sterling has now been confirmed but the team as returning to racing at IMS###
Championship wise, the AMR powered crews best hopes are with the #66 Car Blanche AMR entry of Trenton Estep and Allen Patten and the #26 Heart of Racing AMR entry of Hannah’s Grisham and Greenemeir as both crews rest in P8 and P9 respectively going into next weekend’s penultimate round. Whilst the remains sufficient points to close and surpass the existing points deficit, the chances of those above not scoring many points over the remaining two races are slim!
That leaves the #14 Circle H Racing AMR of David Hampton and Thomas Merrill, a crew who started the year well but since have been dogged by both indiscipline and incident and accident to massively fall away in the championship table and the two new for VIR onwards CSM Motorsport crews of both Morgan Burkhard and Gordon Scully in the #2 car and Ismaeel Ellahi and Ayrton Houk in the #3 car.
Photo credits – Teams / social media
