It appears it’s not a question of if, but when the No. 19 Dallara of Trading Paints Racing will clinch the 2023 LMP2 championship in the VSCA SportsCar Championship.
With another impressive run in Saturday’s second annual Elkhart Lake Sports Car Challenge at Road America, the Allentown, Pennsylvania based team has increased their championship lead to now 342 points over their closest rivals, the No. 96 Dallara of Albrecht Motorsports.
The latter also took second place at Road America, finishing just over four seconds behind the now winningest drivers duo in VSCA history - Jordan Erickson and Selena Ward.
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| Lap 11: The No. 38 Sapphire SimSport Dallara LMP2 spins out at Canada Corner, setting off a major incident involving VR7UAL Pole sitter No. 155 Dallara of DS Racing eSports Team - © 2023 VSCAracing.com / Benjamin Fischer |
Phillip Blauth and Marc Scherschel, who ran a strong race for Albrecht Motorsports, had to settle for second place for a second straight race - as the German team were runners-up at Detroit Belle Isle already, two weeks prior.
Vision 1 Motorsports celebrated a double top-five with the No. 13 Dallara of Kyle Allen and Jeremy Carter taking third place on the podium, closely followed by their team-mates Matthew Allanson and Jay Shallington in the No. 11 car.
Travis Linscome-Hatfield and Rico Kollmeier rounded out the top-five in the No. 14 Fischer Motorsport Dallara P217, who continue to sit third in points.
After a tumultuous 2023 season, that started off with winning the 24 Hours of Daytona and included a suspension after Long Beach in April, DeltaSport (formerly Race Factory) returned to LMP2 competition at Road America, albeit under a new car number 198 and an all-new drivers lineup with Bryan Vorce and Peter Hutchings, who took sixth place.
GSE Racing eSports with Christopher Seftel and Dennis Denicio finished 7th in the No. 86 Dallara.
Andy Banfield with long-time friend and team-mate Jeff Yeager took their No. 66 VRG Sport Dallara LMP2 to eighth place to maintain their fourth spot in the championship standings.
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| The No. 17 Agee Motorsports had a strong outing and led several laps at Road America, before faltering late to a P9 finish and also receiving a post-race penalty for this incident with the No. 94 BMW of Full Send Racing - © 2023 VSCAracing.com / Benjamin Fischer |
Agee Motorsports and the No. 17 Dallara team with Pier Armando Vender and Mark Wilson looked like candidates to take victory at Road America for a while, before faltering late in the race and also being on the receiving end of a penalty for an incident. In the end the Roanoke, Virginia based team finished ninth - the team’s second consecutive top ten result.
Completing the top ten at Road America was the new No. 831 HAC Racing LMP2 entry with Richard Franke and Carl Giangrande, one lap down from the leaders.
Pole sitter DS Racing eSports Team suffers nightmare crash
Starting from VR7UAL Pole Position, thanks to a lap time of 1:52.635 in Qualifying, Pedro Vargas and the No. 155 DS Racing eSports Team Dallara started from the top spot on the grid.
However, race control found the Portuguese driver guilty of a race start violation, resulting in a drive through penalty that dropped the No. 155 machine to P13 in class.
Just two laps later, on lap 11, Vargas found a big incident ahead at Canada Corner. Unable to react in time, he crashed into the stationary No. 38 Dallara LMP2 of Sapphire SimSport’s Sean Conlon , who made his series debut at Road America.
The damage resulting from the incident all but eliminated the pole sitter team from the race and they wound up 11th in the end, two laps down.
The No. 38 Sapphire SimSport team finished 12th, five laps down.
Olympus eSports’s No. 121 Dallara LMP2 with drivers Stian Solberg and Luis Araya were in the focus for all the wrong reasons on Saturday, and involved in nine incidents listed by race control. The Norwegian drivers duo ended up P13 officially in the end, six laps down.
One of the new entries on the series grid, the No. 531 Yellow Submarine Squad Dallara LMP2 failed to complete the required number of laps and finished P14, 50 laps down.
Happy faces and excitement in Trading Paints Racing camp
With another win in the books, their record-setting sixth of the season, Trading Paints and Jordan Erickson, who stood available for interviews once again in victory lane, were understandably excited after the race.
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| The No. 531 Yellow Submarine Squad Dallara P217 made its series debut at Road America, but failed to score championship points and ended up P14 - © 2023 VSCAracing.com / Benjamin Fischer |
“Unbelievable, five race wins in a row. We certainly had to earn this one with a little bit of strategy and good fortune.”, said Erickson.
“Qualifying was a good effort, combined with the race start penalty for the #155, that really allowed us to take control of the race early.”
“The #17 Agee Motorsports guys really pushed us on pace and I think would have had us covered had the strategies not been split at the FCY. For us, pitting and doing an extreme fuel save to the end after the FCY was the winning call. Have to give credit to Selena for all that, she somehow managed decent lap times while saving almost two full laps of fuel. A late practice setup change to use standard gearing stack probably won us the race, or at least made the eventual fuel saving a touch easier. Epic stuff.”
“Looking forward to VIR now. I feel like we’ll have some work to do to find our pace. It’s not a track either of us have run a ton of laps in the LMP2 car. And beyond that, we’ll have another potential roster shake-up for the Indianapolis round.”
Being asked, if the team has started to think about clinching scenarios for the championship, Erickson responded:
“I’d be lying if I told you we weren’t trying to figure out scenarios that allow us to clinch the championship after Indy and take Petit Lemans as a championship victory lap. And there is the Endurance Cup still up for grabs. But as always, we’ll focus on what we can control; our pace and strategy.”
Virginia International Raceway up next
The series returns to action at Virginia International Raceway on August 26th for Round 9 of the 2023 VSCA SportsCar Championship - marking the first time in VSCA history, that there are more than eight races in a season.
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