It’s All Wright In Sebring As Snow & Heylen Sweep Doubleheader

Wright Motorsports’ two Porsches swept both GT World Challenge America races at Sebring, across both categories. The overall and Pro class wins went to the #45 Porsche 992 of Jan Heylen and super-sub Madison Snow.

Meanwhile, the #120 Porsche 991.2 of Adam Adelson and Elliot Skeer won both races in the Pro-Am class – as ST Racing’s Samantha Tan and Neil Verhagen were stripped of what would have been a landmark overall win in Race 2 on Sunday.

Only 14 cars made the trip to Sebring for the penultimate race meeting of the season, and the final double-header round – six in Pro, eight in Pro-Am. Snow, just a week removed from clinching the IMSA GTD Championship at Indianapolis, won the pole position for Race 1 on Saturday.

Verhagen would have won the pole for Race 2 with a new qualifying lap record for any GT3 car regardless of series, but the qualifying times for the #38 ST Racing BMW were disallowed from both races when the manifold pressure was found to be above the published BoP limit. Instead, Ryan Dalziel in the returning, new-look #33 Triarsi Competizione Ferrari 296 GT3 inherited pole honours for Race 2.

Snow took his dominant form out of one German-built GT3 car straight into another from the drop of the green flag in Race 1. He built up a five-second lead over the #94 BimmerWorld Racing BMW of Chandler Hull in second, followed by Pro Championship co-leader Eric Filgueiras in the #28 RS1 Porsche 992.

It was enough of a margin for Heylen to take the reigns of the #45 Porsche and maintain the advantage over the #94 BMW of Bill Auberlen. Auberlen hung within two seconds of the lead before gradually fading, as Heylen and Snow picked up their first overall and Pro class win of the season. It was the first win since Snow was drafted back into the fold at Wright Motorsports to replace an injured Charlie Luck.

Hull and Auberlen consolidated second place, while the battle for third was decided with less than five minutes to go! Stevan McAleer took over the #28 RS1 Porsche and held third place, but fell away from the top two and into the clutches of the #93 Racers Edge Motorsports Acura NSX GT3 of Ashton Harrison and Mario Farnbacher. Farnbacher was in hot pursuit of McAleer not only for a podium but to close down a 19-point championship deficit heading into the weekend.

Farnbacher made his move at Cunningham Corner to take third overall, but just a few corners later, McAleer made contact with the red Acura and sent Farnbacher spinning through the sand and dust.

Trenton Estep would drive through in the #53 MDK Motorsports Porsche 992 to snatch third place, a seventh podium for Estep and Seth Lucas in 2023. McAleer and Filgueiras finished fourth on the road, but a quick review of the collision with Farnbacher resulted in a 44-second post-race time penalty for the RS1 crew, which demoted them to ninth overall and fifth in Pro, behind the #93 of Harrison and Farnbacher.

Alessandro Balzan and Manny Franco were due to take fifth place in the #21 Conquest Racing Ferrari – until the car broke down as Balzan was on the final lap. They dropped to 13th overall and last in the Pro class.

In fifth overall and first in Pro-Am was the #120 Wright Porsche of Adelson and Skeer. Adelson ran second throughout the opening stint behind early leader George Kurtz in the #04 Crowdstrike by Riley Mercedes-AMG GT3.

But the battle for the lead turned when the Riley crew had trouble changing the right-rear tyre during the #04’s pit stop. Skeer took the class lead with a healthy gap to Colin Braun, but Verhagen was on the charge after Tan started from the back, then had to serve a drive-through penalty for jumping out of line at the start. The former Red Bull Junior sailed his violet BMW up the inside of the reigning Daytona 24 Hour champion to take sixth overall, and ultimately, second in Pro-Am while Kurtz and Braun finished behind them to round out the class podium.

Rounding out the rest of the overall top ten from Race 1 were the #007 TRG Aston Martin Vantage GT3 of Derek DeBoer and the returning Ross Gunn, back for the first time in the series since Sonoma; and the #08 DXDT Racing Mercedes of Scott Smithson and fellow IMSA GTD Champion, Bryan Sellers.

GTWCA RACE 1 RESULTS >>

Sunday afternoon brought on Race 2, with Dalziel on the pole alongside Heylen. Triarsi Competizione’s Race 1 went awry almost immediately when Justin Wetherill got spun out in the first corner – but the Central Florida squad was determined to make amends.

Only two laps into the race, came the first championship flash point when the #93 Racers Edge Acura of Farnbacher slowed dramatically, with an overheating issue. The first retirement of the year for Farnbacher and Harrison was a devastating blow to their title hopes.

Dalziel held the lead while Skeer overtook Heylen from third on the grid. The other story of the opening stint was Verhagen, who put in a mammoth first stint to climb from 14th to third in less than 20 minutes. The compulsory mid-race pit stops followed, with the leaders in the Pro-Am class leaving their last stops all the way to the end of the ten-minute window. Thanks to some rapid work from the ST Racing crew, the team’s co-owner and namesake Tan got out of the pits with the overall lead ahead of the #120 Porsche of Adelson and the #33 Ferrari of Wetherill!

Behind her, Snow took control of the #45 Porsche and quickly picked his way past Wetherill and team-mate Adelson to move back into second place overall, while also building a commanding Pro class lead of his own.

But the story of the day couldn’t have been anyone else but Samantha Tan and her team. After 90 minutes and 44 laps of racing, she crossed the chequered flag first after Verhagen started last on the grid.

It was ST Racing’s first-ever overall victory in GT World Challenge America, it was the first win for both drivers, and Tan was only the second woman in series history to score an overall win in a GT World Challenge America race. And it was a heroic last-to-first victory…until all of it wasn’t.

Not long after the celebrations had died down and the top finishers went through technical inspection, the #38 BMW was found to be “non-compliant” by the scrutineers. They were stripped of victory and reclassified 13th and last of all finishers, and then forfeited all of their championship points from Race 2 in the process – which eliminated Tan from contention for the Pro-Am Championship.

That meant, for the second race in a row, the overall win went to the #45 Porsche Snow and Heylen, ahead of the #94 BMW of Hull and Auberlen in second.

And that also meant the #120 Porsche of Adelson and Skeer had taken the Pro-Am class win instead, finishing third overall.

Wetherill would hang on to finish fourth overall (second in Pro-Am) and give Triarsi Competizione its best finish of 2023 after skipping the Road America round; Kurtz and Braun rounded out the Pro-Am podium yet again, while Filgueiras and McAleer finished third in Pro, sixth overall.

Lucas and Estep finished seventh, ahead of Franco and Balzan who bounced back to finish eighth. The #43 RealTime Racing Mercedes (Anthony Bartone/Adam Christodolou) also made amends for being spun at the first corner in Race 1 to finish ninth, with DeBoer and Gunn in tenth.

However, as of publication, the results of Race 2 are currently provisional, pending an appeal from ST Racing.

A statement written by the team on Sunday evening reads: “ST Racing is appealing SRO’s ruling of non-compliance for the overall race-winning #38 BMW M4 GT3 on Sunday’s SRO race at Sebring International Raceway. We stand behind our car, driver, and team’s performance and look forward to presenting the data that shows that the #38 raced within the technical regulations.”

If the appeal is unsuccessful and the results stand, the double victory from Adelson and Skeer has put them into the Pro-Am Championship lead, just three points ahead of Kurtz and Braun to set up a winner-take-all finale at Indy. However, if ST Racing’s appeal is successful, Tan would be back in the championship hunt at Indy, 28 points behind Kurtz and Braun – who would lead Adelson and Skeer by just one point.

As for the Pro Championship race, Filgueiras and McAleer each have a hand on the trophy already, but four teams are still mathematically eligible for the title. Still, it would be hard to overcome the 30-point gap that the RS1 Porsche has to the second-placed BimmerWorld BMW of Hull and Auberlen, which leapfrogged Harrison and Farnbacher in the standings.

Harrison and Farnbacher are now 32 points back, while Estep and Lucas, even without a victory, are also mathematically eligible as they trail by 40 points.

GTWCA RACE 2 RESULTS >>

Images © Fabian Lagunas / SRO Motorsports Group America