The No. 67 Ford GT finished third in Saturday’s IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship Northeast Grand Prix from Lime Rock, failing to post a fourth consecutive win in the series’ GTLM class but continuing a strong podium streak for the team.
Drivers of the No. 67 Ford GT, Richard Westbrook and Ryan Briscoe, claimed wins at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in May and followed it up with wins at Watkins Glen and Canadian Tire Motorsports Park. The result at Lime Rock means the Ford GT has posted a podium finish in every race it’s entered globally sine May.
Briscoe and Westbrook looked poised for a win early on Saturday after qualifying first for the race on the tight 1.5-mile Lime Rock circuit. A minor off early on in the race allowed the No. 25 BMW M6 of Bill Auberlen to sneak by and eventually, the eventual race-winning No. 4 Corvette C7.R as well.
“It was a really hard-fought race,” Briscoe said after the checkered flag. “We had a little first-lap incident that put us at the back of the field, so it was a great fight to get back up to the front.”
The No. 66 Ford GT sister car of Joey Hand and Dirk Muller had a tougher outing, qualifying fifth in class and also finishing fifth. The car made slight contact with another entry early on in the race, which compounded handling issues the team was already experiencing.
“The car already had a little bit of understeer in it, and that made it worse,” Hand said. “It was just a tough race. This kind of place, to pass cars, you need torque and we just didn’t have the torque to get off the corners. We did our best. We raced hard, but ultimately we just didn’t have the car to go fight at the end for Dirk (who closed out the race).”
The IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship will head to Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin next for the Continental Tire Road Race Showcase the weekend of August 5th. Click here for full results from Lime Rock and here for a full schedule for Road America.
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