After 3rd and 4th place finishes by Andrew Aquilante at Barber Motorsports Park last weekend, he led Phoenix American Motorsports leaving the Pirelli World Challenge event.
In the GTS class, Aquilante was joined by teammates Kurt Rezzetano and Preston Calvert in the Ford Mustang Boss 302s. In GT Cup, Calvert raced his #77 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup.
On Friday, Aquilante caught up with the leaders late in the GTS race, and moved up to third on the final laps. Rezzetano finished 7th, with Calvert in 19th.
“We felt very lucky today to make it on the podium,” said Aquilante. “It was a pretty good race from our standpoint for our Mustang. After we qualified 10th we just didn’t have the outright speed to be at the front. Once we made it through the interesting rolling start, we watched some guys getting three wide early. So we dropped back and watched the fireworks up front and at the end found ourselves in third at the finish. We were able to benefit for sure from the great battles taking place up front.”
Saturday’s GTS race 2 was a similar situation for Aquilante, who just missed out on the podium after a battle with Ben Clucas‘ #36 Kia Optima, and ended up finishing fourth. After a drive-through penalty, Rezzetano came up from last place to finish 7th, and score the fastest lap of the race. Calvert dropped down the order from 15th due to an off towards the end of the race.
After previously having a few top-five finishes in GT Cup, Calvert is hoping for some more success in Canada after finishing 6th and 8th this weekend.
Aquilante is now third in the point standings in GTS, with Rezzetano 5th. The next race on the Pirelli World Challenge calendar will be at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in Ontario, from May 15-17.
