The Florida-based DragonSpeed team enjoyed a breakthrough weekend at the fifth round of the American Le Mans Series held at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. Mirco Schultis and Renger van der Zande piloted the number 81 LMPC-class Oreca FLM09-Chevrolet around the newly renovated 2.5-mile roller coaster formerly known as Mosport to finish second, notching up the first ALMS podium result for DragonSpeed and its drivers.
Behind the convincing on-track performance, the team faced some serious hurdles in the run-up to the race. Van der Zande was banged up from a cycling accident while training at the start of the week, the fall hard enough to crack his helmet. And with several of DragonSpeed’s regular crew committed to another event, team boss Elton Julian had to draft in temporary help from a variety of other sources.
Playing through the pain, Van der Zande was quickly on the pace in practice and would have lined up second on the grid and ninth overall but for a controversial decision by race officials to scrap the session times in favor of the class standings after Michael Guasch’s massive shunt brought out the red flag. Teammate Mirco Schultis thus took the green flag from the 14th slot, seventh and last in LMPC.
A strong opening stint saw the German firmly on the pace of the other starting gentleman drivers, climbing to third in class before handing off to van der Zande just past the one-hour mark. The quickly gelling crew executed a pair of smooth pit stops only 10 minutes apart, optimizing the split in drive time. In the interval before the other teams’ driver changes, Renger tore his way through the LMPC field. Reigning class champions CORE Autosport car took advantage of a flat tire to copy DragonSpeed’s strategy, setting up a battle for the lead between CORE’s Colin Braun and van der Zande before the day’s only yellow flag period intervened.
DragonSpeed opted for track position over new tires at the final round of pit stops, but Renger lost the lead avoiding an errant GTC runner on the restart, dropping to third. He quickly repassed but could not shake local hero Kyle Marcelli’s BAR1 entry. For the last 30 laps, the Canadian youngster was on the Dutchman’s tail, but Renger made masterful use of traffic to stymie any overtaking effort, even exploiting the lead battle for the GT class to put second place out of reach with two laps to go.
DragonSpeed team principal Elton Julian said, “We saw today how complete a driver Renger is, with the right combination of bravery and brains, and Mirco’s excellent run shows he has found his groove here in the ALMS. As a team, we overcame some disruptions this week to deliver a great strategy and solid pit work. Today was one more step towards the win we all know we can achieve, and I’m happy to report Mirco’s confirmation that we’ll be running the rest of the season together.”
Source : DragonSpeed