Colin Braun dominated the second half of the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship’s Prototype Challenge class at Kansas Speedway, giving CORE Autosport their third PC win of the season.
The class was given a standalone race at the Kansas roval, the TUDOR Championship category sharing the pair of 45-minute races with the Prototype Lights series. For the unique format each driver took one half of the race, team owner Jon Bennett wheeling CORE’s #54 to fifth place in the first race.
The finishing order for the first 45 minutes only set the grid for the second half of the race. It was Luis Diaz who lined up on the pole position for the night time segment of the race following Sean Rayhall’s win of the first 45 minutes.
8Star Motorsports man Rayhall leapt into the lead on the very first lap of the race, beating pole winner Chris Cumming who ended the first half of the race in second, five seconds behind Rayhall.
David Ostella – one of two drivers in the 10 car field tackling the race format solo – finished third, the victor of a battle for the place against Frankie Montecalvo who spun his PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports car down the order to finish – and give co-driver Gunnar Jeannette a starting position for the second half of – ninth.
At the start of the second part of the race Braun needed only a single lap to move from fifth place into the lead, passing Diaz as he fell back to third behind Alex Tagliani, the Canadian completing the race in the RSR Racing entry qualified and started by Cumming.
Tagliani ran second for much of the race until a yellow flag period following the retirement of one of the Lights car. Following the restart he fell back, Renger van der Zande taking up the ultimately impossible challenge of catching and passing Braun as he pulled out a lead over the sriver of the #8 Starworks Motorsport car driven earlier by Mirco Schultis.
Van der Zande would cross the line 4.6 seconds in arrears to Braun ahead of Diaz and Jeannette, making amends for his co-drivers first half mistake. Tagliani completed the top five.
Ostella struggled as the cars around him were turned over to the more experienced halves of their respective line-ups, falling to ninth place.
Having been apart since March’s 12 Hours of Sebring the full four classes of the TUDOR Championship come back together for the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen on June 29.
