SunTrust Racing endured another frustrating race as Grand-Am visited Montreal last weekend.
A second place finish looked possible for the Ricky Taylor and Max Angelelli machine, until contact late in the race resulted in the team finishing a disappointed and frustrated fifth place.
The #8 Starworks car driven by Ryan Dalziel made contact with the SunTrust car in the last twenty minutes of the race at turn ten of the Montreal circuit. Taylor, who was behind the wheel at the time, dropped to sixth place in the Daytona Prototype class as a result of the contact. He was only able to make up one position by the end of the race.
“We went into the hairpin and were working through GT traffic. I felt a hit in the rear and that was pretty much it for us. He (Dalziel) came and apologized afterward, so I know it wasn’t anything intentional. But it cost us the race, really. We had a good, solid second place car. We had good track position, we were ahead of the 99 (Gurney), which was a really dominant car all weekend,” the twenty-three year old bemoaned.
“Today was another one of those days,” Angelelli summarised.
“It’s become kind of common for us this year, unfortunately. It’s a shame. We were ahead of the 99 before the incident and were looking good for a podium finish, for sure – either second or third. It was just such an unlucky occurrence. It took away what would have been a really good day for us. Other than that, my stint was pretty uneventful.”
“Every single race, it seems something has just bitten us this season,” team owner Wayne Taylor said.
“The guys did a spectacular job in the pits today. We were on strategy for a solid podium finish. But, once Dalziel took Ricky out, our race was over. At that point, we knew we were going to finish second because we knew the 60 (Oswaldo Negri in the Michael Shank Racing Ford Riley) needed to pit for fuel, which it did. Dalziel came and apologized to Ricky, but we still are out a second-place finish that would have really kept us on pace for a top-three finish in the points by season’s end, which has become our goal the way this season has gone.”
“Now, we have two weekends off to get our stuff together for the final two races of the season. We need to just keep performing at our best and hope the results actually reflect the effort we put into it.”