Racing News

Bret Curtis finished seventh in GTA in the #32 Turner Motorsport Z4 GT3 in the second Pirelli World Challenge race on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida. His teammate, Bill Ziegler, finished tenth in class in Z4 GT3 #95.

Ziegler and Curtis had finished eleventh and twelfth in class in Saturday’s sprint. Curtis had to pit early in the race for repairs after he was caught up in a lap one incident; he recovered to finish just behind his teammate.

Porsche 911 GT3R racer Michael Lewis finished first in GTA in Saturday’s race, while Frank Montecalvo won the class on Sunday in a Mercedes AMG SLS  GT3. The overall wins went to Ryan Eversley in an Acura TLX-GT on Saturday and to Olivier Beretta in a Ferrari 458 GT3 on Sunday.

Both fifty-minute sprints were plagued by yellow flag periods. A multi-car incident at the start of Saturday’s race led to a 25-minute yellow; then, after 15 minutes of green flag racing, the track went yellow again because of a single car incident. Cleanups on the street circuit can be time consuming; despite the best efforts of track personnel the race did not go back to green. On Sunday, a multi-car incident on lap two led to a 30-minute caution period. This time, when the race went green, it stayed green until the end.

The next PWC race will be run at Long Beach on April 19, where the GT and GTA racers will run a single sprint. All PWC races are streamed live at www.world-challengetv.com.—Brian S. Morgan