There was last lap drama in the GT Daytona category as Starworks Motorsport won overall in the first of two sprint races at the Continental Tire Monterey Grand Prix.
There or there abouts for much of the race, the #8 Starworks machine of Renger van der Zande and Micro Schultis battled strongly with the #25 8Star car of Luis Diaz and Sean Rayhall as well as the #09 RSR Racing car of Duncan Ende and Bruno Junqueira.
Van der Zande was seemingly coming under pressure by Rayhall coming into the final stages of the race but a tap from the #23 Team Seattle car at turn ten saw it spinning into the gravel and lose a lot of time.
Of note in the leading PC class was the incident involving the #38 Performance Tech Racing car of David Ostella and Charlie Sears. Running middle order for much of the race, a spin into to the support of the Continental Tire Bridge on the exit of turn three saw substantial rear end damage.
A few corners later at the exit of the Corkscrew the car was in the wars yet again as it was hit by a GT Daytona Porsche and badly damaged its suspension, thankfully it pulled off line and avoided a full course yellow.
Into GT Daytona and it was last lap drama for the #45 Flying Lizard Motorsports Audi R8 of Spencer Pumpelly and Nelson Canache Jr. Leading by 13 seconds going into the final lap the Audi seemingly ran out of fuel heading towards turn ten, surrendering the lead – and the race victory – to Dane Cameron in the #94 Turner Motorsports BMW with the Paul Miller Audi 0.168 seconds behind.
Pumpelly was eventually classified sixth but TV pictures showed it stopped on the front straight tantalisingly short of the chequered flag.
Indeed it was GTD which saw the only full course yellows come out – two in total – the first coming inside the first two minutes of the race as Patrick Dempsey in the #27 Porsche span into the gravel at the entrance to the Corkscrew. He ended up finishing in 20th position in class with reported brake problems causing the teams woes.
The second full course caution came approximately 20 minutes later and was called for the stranded Fall Line Audi on the exit of turn five, a quick tow out and that eventually retired due to unknown issues.
In less than two hours, the second of the two sprint races will get underway featuring the P and the GTLM classes, @thecheckerflag has live tweeting of the entire race.
