Corvette Wins at VIR and takes the lead in season points in GTD-Pro class
The 2 Corvettes in the GTD class, sucked and ended the race towards the back of the field

Alexander Sims and Antonio Garcia extended their points lead in GTD Pro with their first victory of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season in Sunday’s Michelin GT Challenge at Virginia International Raceway.

Sims took his No. 3 Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R to a 1.070-second win over a hard-charging Albert Costa in the title-contending No. 81 DragonSpeed Ferrari 296 GT3.
Costa got around the No. 4 Corvette of Tommy Milner for second with 20 minutes to go and closed the gap in the closing minutes.

Both factory-supported Corvettes, and the DragonSpeed Ferrari, all pitted when the No. 48 Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT3 EVO of Max Hesse stopped on track with an apparent engine failure with 59 minutes to go that brought out the second full-course caution of the race.

An undercut strategy in the opening hour for Garcia put the No. 3 Corvette out front after the pair of Paul Miller BMWs got past the pole-sitting DragonSpeed Ferrari of Giacomo Altoe at the start of the two-hour and 40-minute contest.

Costa kept his championship hopes alive with a second place result, with Milner completing the podium ahead of the No. 64 Multimatic Motorsports Ford Mustang GT3 of Seb Priaulx, who started and finished the race after a middle stint by Mike Rockenfeller.
The No. 77 AO Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R of Laurin Heinrich and Klaus Bachler bounced back from an opening hour drive-through penalty for incident responsibility with the No. 4 Corvette of Nicky Catsburg to finish fifth.

Snow, in the remaining Paul Miller BMW, was one of several GTD Pro and GTD cars to get caught out by the race’s second-to-last yellow, and was relegated to a sixth place result after co-driver Neil Verhagen led the majority of the opening hour.

Verhagen ran long in the opening stint, which saw the Paul Miller squad split strategies between its two BMWs.
Ellis Gives Winward Top Class Honors in GTD

Winward Racing picked up its third GTD class victory of the season, which saw Philip Ellis hold off a hard-charging Mario Farnbacher and Kenton Koch to extend he and Russell Ward’s points lead.
An undercut strategy during the second round of stops got Ellis out ahead of the No. 78 Forte Racing Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 of Mario Farnbacher, who led for much of the second hour.

The No. 021 Triarsi Competizione Ferrari of Koch and Onofrio Triarsi, however, finished second in class after Farnbacher was served a drive-through penalty for blocking, which came down on the final lap.
Farnbacher and co-driver Misha Goikhberg were classified 11th in class when factoring in a post-race time penalty equivalent to a drive-through.

The result for Koch and Triarsi came despite a drive-through penalty for the Bronze-rated driver for incident responsibility with the No. 34 Conquest Racing Ferrari of Manny Franco early on.
IMSA race control handed out three penalties within the first 15 minutes to cars that had contact, in a stark contrast to the last round at Road America following a stricter enforcement of on-track conduct that was communicated during the pre-race drivers’ meeting.

The class pole-sitting No. 12 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3 of Jack Hawksworth was another to get a penalty, which cost the team a potential chance of victory. Hawksworth and co-driver Parker Thompson finished eighth in class.
The No. 27 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo of Tom Gamble and title contender Casper Stevenson took a surprise podium result, ahead of a hard-charging Robby Foley in the No. 96 Turner Motorsport BMW.

The No. 70 Inception Racing Ferrari of Frederik Schandorff, which was running inside the top-five in the closing stanza, was served a drive-through penalty for blocking with less than ten minutes to go.
The race had three yellows, the first for debris from a trackside banner that was hit during a frantic opening lap, and the final for a fiery exit for the No. 45 Wayne Taylor Racing Lamborghini of Danny Formal with 38 minutes to go.

Formal climbed from the fully engulfed Lamborghini under his own power and gave a thumbs-up, indicating no serious injuries.
It set up a 28-minute shootout to the finish.