After a hard-fought sixth place finish in the first half of this weekend’s double-header, GMG’s James Sofronas scored a third place finish in Sunday’s Cadillac Grand Prix of Sonoma. The third place result keeps Sofronas within striking distance of points leader Patrick Long with two races left in the season.
Long won both halves of the double-header, but Sofronas made it interesting. He battled up from sixth on the grid to challenge Andy Pilgrim for second, but hit traffic at the wrong time and settled for third.
“I think I just let it slip away,” Sofronas said. “I was saving my tires at the end and I could see I was gaining on them. I had to work a little harder than I’d like, but every time I would catch them I didn’t get the traffic break. Usually it works that way, the first two get through and the third gets left out. Every time I had a legitimate shot at catching them, traffic held me up but that’s how it goes. Getting back on the podium was at least what we wanted to do, so I’m happy for the GMG guys for their stellar effort and looking forward to my favorite track, Laguna Seca.”
Meanwhile, StopTech’s own Dino Crescentini had a strong fifth place finish in Saturday’s opener and was running near the front of the pack on Sunday when clutch trouble put him out for the weekend. In Saturday’s action, Crescentini had started 10th and was charging hard at the conclusion of the race, but couldn’t get around Mike Skeen or Andy Pilgrim. The three finished nose-to-tail after 27 laps of racing.Rookie Stephen Ruiz drove the No. 41 StopTech/GMG Porsche to 12th and 14th place in Race 1 and 2, respectively.
Peter Cunningham extended his career wins record in GTS, driving the No. 1 Acura/RealTime Racing Acura TSX to victory on Saturday, while rookie Ben Crosland took the top step of the podium on Sunday in the No. 25 RaceWithRP.com Ford Mustang FR500S, which uses a StopTech Trophy BBK.
And in TC, it was Lawson Aschenbach who led flag-to-flag on Saturday in the Power Slot-equipped No. 71 Compass360 Racing Honda Civic Si to earn his fourth win of the season. Aaron Povoledo’s StopTech-equipped No. 88 K-Pax Racing Volvo C30 finished first in Sunday’s race, followed by Aschenbach and the No. 33 Germanautoparts.com/Techtonics VW GTI of Tristan Herbert, also wearing a StopTech BBK.
The Pirelli World Challenge Championship heads to Laguna Seca next for the penultimate race, before the season finale at Road Atlanta at the end of September.
You can see television coverage of Rounds Nine and Ten from Infineon Raceway on Versus at 5:30 p.m. EDT on September 18.
[Images © StopTech/Ryan Kim; SCCA Pro Racing, Inc./Mark Weber]
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