Barbosa and Fittipaldi Take Victory at Indianapolis

The Winner (Photo: Don Andersen/RIS)

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JOAO BARBOSA AND CHRISTIAN FITTIPALDI PILOT CORVETTE PROTOTYPE TO TUDOR SPORTSCAR WIN AT INDY
Scott Pruett and Sage Karam Take Second in Ford/Riley, Viper Wins GT Le Mans Class

INDIANAPOLIS -RIS- In near-perfect weather, Joao Barbosa and former Indy car driver Christian Fittipaldi drove a near-perfect race to win the TUDOR United SportCar Championship’s Brickyard Grand Prix on the 2.439-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course.

The two Portugese-speaking drivers (one from Portugal, one from Brazil) launched forward in the #5 Corvette Daytona Prototype, passing the pole-sitting HPD ARX-03b of Scott Sharp and Ryan Dalziel at the seventh corner of Lap 1, and didn’t look back.

“It was definitely and awesome race for us,” said Fittipaldi, who was rookie of the year here in Indianapolis for the 1995 Indy 500. “All the stars aligned. Hat’s off to the team.”

“I kept asking ‘Are we going to need fuel?’, and the team just said, ‘Keep doing what you’re doing.’” Barbosa said of the closing laps.

The win puts the #5 team first in the Prototype championship.

Photos of today's TUDOR and Continental Tire sports car races (the latter won by Robin Liddell and Andrew Davis in the Stevenson Camaro Z/28.R) can be found here:

TUDOR United SportsCar Championship

Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge

The three-caution race was punctuated by yellows for debris from the track itself, as the curbs in corners began to come up under the heavy traffic of both the TUDOR and previously-held Continental Tire SportsCar Series races.

The Prototype class top three were Barbosa/Fittipaldi, Scott Pruett/Memo Rojas/Sage Karam, and Richard Westbrook/Michael Valiente.

It was the third second-place finish in the last three years for Pruett and Rojas.

The Prototype Challenge class was won by Canadian Chris Cumming and England’s Jack Hawksworth’s ORECA FLM09.

In the perennially hyper-competitive GT Le Mans class, the polesitting Ferrari 458 of former F1 pilot Giancarlo Fisichella and Pierre Kaffer commanded the P1 in class for a good part of the beginning of the race, even as pressure built from the Porsche factory #911 of Nick Tandy and Richard Lietz.

The IMS road course rewards raw power, and Dodge’s Viper is never short of that. Jonathan Bomarito took full advantage of that, moving the #93 Viper SRT to P1, finishing ahead of the Ferrari by 10.789 seconds.

Patrick Long brought the Long/Michael Christensen factory Porsche #912 in third close behind the Ferrari.

The second-place #62 Ferrari of Risi Competizione went on to win the Green Challenge.

The Daytona GT field was led by Alessandro Balzan and Jeff Westphal in the #63 Ferrari 458, beating the second-place combination of Christopher Haase and Bryce Miller in the #48 Audi R8 by a full lap.

From here, both the TUDOR and Continental Tire series head to the beer and brat country of Road America, Wisconsin, in two weeks’ time.

TUDOR United SportsCar Championship

BRICKYARD GRAND PRIX
Indianapolis Motor Speedway (2.439 Miles)
Race Time 2:46.02

July 25, 2014

UNOFFICIAL RESULTS