The Champion Motorsports No. 79 Dallara team wins the inaugural VSCA Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta in dominating fashion, beating the competition by a margin of more than a lap.
Element SimRacing's No. 7 Dallara experiences a difficult race with an early horrific crash, but goes on to finish the race, only to score no championship points for exceeding the drive time limits. The P2 Prototype class VSCA SportsCar Championship ends up tied with Element SimRacing hanging on to the title on account of three season wins as the tie breaker.
In GT3 it is Kinetic Racing taking the series championship with its No. 67 Porsche 911 GT3R who end up fifth in Saturday's final season race. FR13DA Sport Group's No. 13 Meguiar's Porsche ends up winning its first race of the season in the Petit Le Mans by holding off Torque Freak Racing's No. 6 Porsche team.
The ten-hour race on Saturday also marked the season finale of the VSCA Endurance Cup (Daytona, Sebring, Watkins Glen, Road Atlanta). Champion Motorsports ends the season on top, winning the P2 Prototype Endurance Cup title, tied for points with the No. 14 Dallara of Fischer Motorsport, but earning championship honors with the win at Road Atlanta.
The Endurance Cup GT3 title goes to Torque Freak Racing's No. 6 Porsche team, who finished second at Road Atlanta and scored three top-five finishes in the four Endurance Cup events of 2022.
The Petit Le Mans saw a total of three caution periods and numerous spectacular wrecks, none bigger than the one involving the No. 17 Dallara P217 of Agee Motorsports and DRG Racing's No. 97 Mercedes AMG GT3 shortly after the restart following the second full-course yellow of the day.
The incident that occured on the long back straight collected several cars, resulting in a "Big One" and causing multiple entries to retire from the race.
Long-time leaders and 24 Hours of Daytona champions No. 747 Lone Wolf Motorsports were strong contenders for the win for the race but faded late after spinning out in turn three following the third and final restart of the event.
In whole, the race saw 18 lead changes and out of a 38-car grid, 27 finished the race.
When the Champion Motorsports No. 79 Dallara team arrived at Road Atlanta last weekend, they thought the only thing they were fighting for was the race win.
Sitting fifth in the overall championship, 360 points behind the No. 7 Element SimRacing Dallara, and ninth in Endurance Cup points, they had no chance, or so they thought.
They walked away not only victorious of the 2022 VSCA Sportscar Championship Petit Le Mans, but Endurance Cup champions, and Vice-Champions of the VSCA Sportscar Championship. So how did this seemingly impossible feat transpire?
It all started when Cameron Barker drove the car out on track for the first time in Free Practice 1. It didn’t take him long to get up to speed, and teammate Thomas Fisher made light work of the setup to allow them to quickly dial in and focus on getting up to pace and getting consistent with the times.
Barker set the second-fastest time on Saturday afternoon, setting a precedent for what was to come.
The duo was fast all the way up to VSCA GRID Pole Qualifying and looked ready to fight for pole position for the start of the race.
Barker qualified the car but made a mistake out of the chicane which cost them the fight for pole position and would mean they were going to start third on the grid for Petit Le Mans, but it’s a ten-hour race, a lot of things can happen, and it did.
Off the start, the No. 79 Dallara jumped the No. 10 Race4CAT Motorsport car, which subsequently crashed by itself. After that the pack got separated in GT3 traffic.
At the first pit stop, they jumped pole sitters No. 747 Lone Wolf Motorsports after they swapped drivers, with Pedro Gomez exiting, being replaced by Martin Brandborg, but in turn got jumped by the No. 7 who had a faster pit stop.
The championship leaders had a horrible accident on the out-lap, relegating them to the back of the P2 Prototype runners after lengthy repairs.
The No. 79 CMSracing.com Pro car also got jumped a lap later by the No. 23 Sim Racing Grid Dallara. They continued to run in second position until the next Full-Course-Yellow (FCY) was thrown.
Thomas Fisher climbed his way into the car under caution and did not waste any time on the restart, taking the lead from Mark DeBoer into turn six on the first lap.
After that he pulled away, only to be held up by traffic which allowed the No. 747 Lone Wolf Motorsports car to catch up to him. An intense battle ensued, with five officially registered lead changes but many more could be seen within the same lap.
Both drivers could be seen pushing the boundaries of the track on a few occasions, hoping to find that extra tenth of a second to give them a leg up over the other.
After multiple stints of going head-to-head, the battle finally came to an end when the No. 747 Lone Wolf Motorsports team made its next driver swap, with Tres Drawhorn taking over driving duties, only to spin on cold tires in turn five on his out-lap.
From then on, the No. 79 team’s driver duo carried on pushing and built a one-minute lead, hoping to be able to push it to a lap prior to next full-course yellow, but unfortunately it was not to be.
The full-course yellow was deployed as Fisher could see his rival, erasing the hard-earned lead the Canadian had built.
His teammate Cameron Barker took over during the caution period and was ready for a fight when the restart ensued. Only he wouldn’t need it, because Tres Drawhorn lost the car three corners after the green flag and ended up in the wall.
From then on it was smooth sailing for the American outfit, who maintained a one-lap lead over the closest remaining competition, the No. 14 Fischer Motorsport Dallara.
The Champion Motorsports team endured one big scare in the late stages of the race, when the No. 51 World of SimRacing Team P2 Prototype lost control into turn six with its headlights shining up the track towards a rapidly approaching Thomas Fisher who was blinded and overshot the corner slightly, managing to keep it out of the wall thanks to an incredible display of reflex and car control.
Fisher ended up with the fastest lap of the race with a time of 1:08.731, and Barker was second with a 1:08.882.
At the end of the race, the winners took the checkered flag by a full lap and a half over runners-up No. 14 Dallara with drivers Kyle Birnie, David Koopmans, and Niclas Pedersen.
Crossing the line in third was the No. 23 SimRacing Grid machine with Mark DeBoer, Alexander Morris, and Dan McFarlane.
But the winners of the night was Champion Motorsports and the No. 79 team who were ecstatic with their first victory of the season, and as teammates, with Fisher being heard screaming with joy over the team radio; “Oh my God! Oh my God! We did it!!!”.
Little did they know at the time, the No. 7 Element SimRacing car exceeded the maximum drive time with driver Jan Vollmers, resulting in no championship points scored for the German championship leaders.
This meant that the No. 79 car, who scored maximum SportsCar Championship points and near maximum Endurance Cup points at Road Atlanta, would win the latter on countback over the No. 14 Fischer Motorsport entry, with one Endurance Cup race win over the competitors none.
They also tied newly crowned series champions Element SimRacing in the overall championship but lost out on the tie-breaker number of wins three to one.
Fisher had this to say about the championship win after being informed by the organizers:
“Wow man, are you serious? That’s incredible really, we didn’t even think we had a shot at winning that. That’s amazing!”
“Massive thanks to the whole team, Cam (Cameron Barker), JT (John-Taylor Tami), Adrian (Fernandez), and Kris (Hudson).”, said Fisher.
“Kris and Adrian left us early on, but they were vital to this team’s formation and success. Most of all though, a big Thank You to David Anderson. He has been the best mentor for me that I could ever ask for since I joined the team.”, Fisher added while getting emotional.
“He’s always calm, collected, and enjoying himself. Without him none of us would be here, he is our catalyst you could say. We had a rough race in Sebring and Watkins so to come back after those and win, man that’s just incredible. It’ll take me a few days to come to terms with this”, Fischer laughed.
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