Double Podium Results for Acura at Road America - Speedway Digest

A late race pit stop – followed by a charge through the field in the closing laps of today’s IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race at Road America – saw the #10 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura ARX-06 of Ricky Taylor and Filipe Albuquerque finish third in a caution-filled contest.

Frequent yellow-flags turned the 2 hour, 40-minute event into a contest of strategies, with the #10 Acura leading 34 of the 62-lap run, with teammates Louis Deletraz and Jordan Taylor at the front for another 10 laps. But the two-stop strategy for the #10 required them to pit in the final 30 minutes, with Ricky Taylor emerging in ninth. A determined effort at the restart, with just nine laps remaining, saw him bring the #10 Acura home third.

The sister #40 Acura ARX-06 of Louis Deletraz and Jordan Taylor was in recovery mode even earlier. On a three-stop strategy, a pair of drive-through penalties – for contact and working on the car outside of its designated pit box – dropped the #40 down the order. Jordan Taylor and Deletraz would come home eighth.

In the production based GTD category, the #66 Gradient Racing Acura NSX GT3 Evo22 of Sheena Monk and Stevan McAleer turned their own two-stop strategy into a third-place GTD finish – their best result of the 2024 season. McAleer was able to take advantage of a chaotic, contact-filled, final two laps that started with class leader Parker Thompson pitting for fuel, to jump from seventh to the final step on the podium.

IMSA SportsCar Weekend at Road America Acura Race Results

Finished 3^rd overall – #10 Filipe Albuquerque and Ricky Taylor; Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura ARX-06
Finished 8^th overall – #40 Louis Deletraz and Jordan Taylor; Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura ARX-06
Finished 3^rd in GTD – #66 Stevan McAleer and Sheena Monk; Gradient Racing Acura NSX GT3 Evo22

Quotes

Filipe Albuquerque (#10 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura ARX-06) Finished 3^rd : “After such strong pace we had in the car, the win was what we wanted. Strategy was a bit crazy chaotic with yellows. It seemed like we had to pit for fuel to go to the end, and Ricky did a monster job to go from last to P3 after that. He had the advantage of new tires, but he was last and made it happen. Great pace from our Acura ARX-06. It’s just a shame we didn’t come home with a win.”

Ricky Taylor (#10 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura ARX-06) Finished 3^rd: “We had a great car today. Both Acura’s were fantastic, locking up the front row [in qualifying]. I think

it’s just a shame not to come away with a win with the fastest car. Hats off to the guys for the test we did improving the car. I think between HRC and Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti, we developed some really good processes that helped us during the race – they gave us a lot of performance. But, at the end of the day, it’s still not the result we wanted.”

Stevan McAleer (#66 Gradient Racing Acura NSX GT3 Evo22) 3^rd in GTD: “This means a helluva lot, especially for Sheena. They’ve been hovering around P4, P5, P6 for a long time. I saw the two Mercedes getting into each other, something funky happening coming out of three, and that was my shot. I don’t like finishing P5, so I was willing to take the risk! I’m absolutely stoked for Gradient, for JG Wentworth and Sheena. This is a massive day.”

Sheena Monk (#66 Gradient Racing Acura NSX GT3 Evo22) 3^rd in GTD: “It’s a shame it took this long. I’m just really grateful to Stevan for coming in and bringing some life into this. The people at Gradient have been working really hard, it’s been a long time where the folks at JG Wentworth have been supporting us and supporting us through a lot of adversity. This just feels good to me for everyone else. I’m just happy that a lot of other people are able to take part in this. It’s a good feeling. Road America has traditionally been quite kind to me, so it’s just a pleasure to be here and it’s a pleasure to get my first WeatherTech podium here.”

Jordan Taylor (#40 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura ARX-06) Finished 8^th: “Not the day we wanted overall. Starting 1-2 was great, and we led some laps at the beginning which was nice. I felt like we had a great car in clean air. But once we lost track position after our first pit stop, it was so tough to make passes that we were kind of stuck from that point on. The GTP field is so competitive these days, we didn’t have the opportunities we needed to make passes again. It was good to see the #10 car kind of bounce back and get a podium, but I think it was a day of woulda, coulda, shoulda’s for us.”

David Salters (President, Honda Racing Corporation USA) on today’s IMSA race at Road America: ”An interesting weekend. Thanks to a huge team effort from our men and women at HRC and WTRAndretti, the car was fast – as shown in qualifying and in large parts of the race. In truth, it was a caution-strewn, scrappy race, which we probably didn’t make the most of. It’s good to be disappointed with podium finish, but we seemed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. On a happier note, a big shout out to everyone at Gradient Racing, it was lovely to see them get a podium result today. Congratulations to Andris Laivins and his team.”

Next

The GTD classes of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship travel to VIRginia International Raceway in Danville, VA, for the Michelin GT Challenge, August 23-25. The full IMSA field next runs September 20-22 on the road course of the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the six-hour TireRack.com Battle of the Bricks, the fourth of five endurance races on the 2024 IMSA schedule.

Honda Racing PR