Bryan Sellers battled through the pouring rain at Watkins Glen to take his first GS class victory in the Grand-Am Continental Tyre Sports Car Challenge.
Rain had plagued track activities at Watkins Glen all weekend, providing a real challenge for teams in terms of set-up and tyre choices for the race. Sellers team-mate Mark Boden started the race from eleventh on the grid, with rain threatening once again as Boden handed the car over to Sellers mid-race.
Sellers worked his way through the field after pitstops, however a late race rainstorm, just as he took second place, almost ended any opportunity for the victory. With only 35 minutes left on the clock, the rain came down so heavily that many cars slid off the track and made heavy contact with the barriers.
The green flag flew with just two minutes to go, and Sellers managed to pass a backmarker and set up a move on the race leader into turn one on the final lap of the race. Sellers then drove a very tense final lap as he tried to keep the car on the tarmac whilst on slick tyres.
“This win is fantastic,” said Sellers. “I am so happy for the Trim-Tex Fall-Line team and for Mark! He has had so many great drives, especially here, I’m just happy that we could finally get a win. The team made some great strategy calls and put me in position to win. I just wanted to do my part to reward all the effort. This win is really sweet because it didn’t come easily and it didn’t happen overnight. We really had to earn this one.
“I practiced accelerating out of the corner the last two laps behind the pace car so I knew I could get a jump out of the last corner. The pass on the brakes was a little bit of blind faith that we would have enough grip and it worked out! After that I just worked at running the quickest lap I could without going over the edge. It is so difficult to be the first guy through those conditions, especially on the last lap. The track was still very wet and the grip was low. I’m pretty happy we didn’t have to do more laps. I knew I had to take every opportunity. You never know if you’ll get another chance and I wasn’t about to come back second because I didn’t risk it on the restart.”
