The Conquest Endurance team and drivers Martin Plowman and David Heinemeier Hansson scored their first career win in the American Le Mans Series presented by Tequila Patron today at the Mobil 1 Presents the Grand Prix of Mosport. It was a hard fought race in the P2 category in which the Conquest and Level 5 Motorsports cars had numerous side by side battles, but eventually the #37 came away victorious and won from pole in only the team’s fifth start.
It was a remarkable weekend in which the Conquest team was fastest overall during Friday testing, took the pole position on Saturday, and the win on Sunday, all feats which are even more impressive considering that it was the first visit for both the team and the drivers to the Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.
Heinemeier Hansson took the green flag for the 2h45min race and fought his way through traffic while maintaining a quick pace and holding off the #055 Level 5 car until the first caution came out on lap 14. After a quick pit stop for fuel he was penalized for passing under yellow and forced to serve a stop and go penalty which dropped him to second place in class and tenth overall. The Danish driver kept pushing and was able to slowly make up the lost time and at the one-hour mark made a daring move in Turn 3 to pass Scott Tucker in the #055 car to regain the lead.
Plowman took over at the 1h26min mark and for the next stint concentrated on managing the gap to the second place car, pushing when needed but at the same time saving up his tires for the end of the race. A late race caution wiped out the gap to the second place car and Plowman was now only a few car lengths ahead of the #055 car. With 12 minutes to go the British driver had a brilliant restart and managed to hold off the hard charging Christophe Bouchut for the rest of the race, giving Conquest its first win after scoring three runner-up finishes in a row in the last three races.
Next on the schedule for the Conquest Endurance team will be the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Challenge, which will take place August 2-6 at the Mid Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington, Ohio.
Martin Plowman Driver #37 Conquest Endurance / Morgan / Nissan / Dunlop
“I feel great, it’s been a long time coming! I have one word for the win today: Finally! The team did an amazing job all weekend, the car was as close to perfect as possible, and David did a great first stint. He gave me the car in the lead and I managed to get a pretty good gap to Bouchut. I was managing the gap and was making sure that I took care of my tires, even when he was catching me a bit in the middle of the stint I wanted to make sure the tires were good for the end of the race. Then the caution came out and when I looked in my mirrors I realized that he would be right behind me on the restart, which is the last thing I wanted. But on the restart I just drove like a bat out of hell and passed a bunch of cars to get away from him, he eventually got a penalty and that gave us a pretty comfortable gap. The last few laps were nerve-racking, but I just focused on bringing it home and making sure we got our first win.”
David Heinemeier Hansson Driver #37 Conquest Endurance / Morgan / Nissan / Dunlop
“It feels amazing to get our first win. We put all the pieces of the puzzle together, we had great pit stop, a great car, and just executed flawlessly. It was really fun racing Scott Tucker out there, I don’t think I’ve ever had that close of a dogfight in P2 before. It seems like in endurance racing in general things tend to spread out, but here we had the same strategy and very similar pace and we had a great fight. I’m very happy for the team and I’m ready to get more wins!”
Eric Bachelart Team Owner Conquest Endurance
“It s a great feeling to get our first win! The team has been improving weekend after weekend and here at Mosport we’ve had a really good team effort, a strong drive by the drivers, good engineering, and fast pit stops. We really enjoy the close competition with Level 5 and we look forward to fighting them for the rest of the year. The first win is always the toughest one, now we need to make sure we get a few more under our belt and try to fight for the championship towards the end of the season.”
Source : Conquest Endurance