Fresh off of a win at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, Ford Chip Ganassi Racing teammates Ryan Briscoe and Richard Westbrook head to Lime Rock Park with a six point lead in GTLM standings. With all eyes on the class in the Northeast Grand Prix, the team knows how difficult their competitors will make the weekend for them.
The victory in Bowmanville, Ontario was the second win for the #67 Ford, the first being the Rolex 24 at Daytona marking Chip Ganassi Racing’s 200th victory. The road to the top of the standings has not been easy, with major competitors taking their own victories along the way.
With a difficult loss in the Sahlen’s Six Hours of the Glen, the team hopes that they are back on the right track.
“After such a disappointment at Watkins Glen,” Ryan Briscoe explained, “where we definitely had the fastest car all weekend and then we had a mechanical issue one hour into the race. That was a tough one to swallow.”
The Ford Chip Ganassi entry had dominated practice and qualifying sessions, before losing pace and surrendering the victory to their teammates in the #66 Ford after a considerable push for the win by Nick Tandy and the #911 Porsche GT.
Tandy has had his share of missed opportunities as well. He and teammate Patrick Pilet sit sixth in the championship standings after missing out on a victory in Canada despite setting a new lap record in qualifying.
“It’s not very often that you get to come to a track in the GTLM class and have a quick car in all of the sessions,” Tandy said, “and a car that suits a particular circuit.”
The Porsche team has been considerably aggressive in fighting to the front of the pack. A fight for the win north of the border saw a considerable amount of contact between the points leading Ford of Westbrook and the hard charging Porsches. For the Ford team, this fight is indicative of the remainder of the championship.
“I’d already been torpedoed by [Earl] Bamber, Then I had [Patrick] Pilet behind me so I thought ‘I’m going to get torpedoed again’ – which I did,” Westbrook said of the physical fight for the win. “Once I could pull away from Pilet, I could start breathing again and it was just a case of bringing the car home.”
“The Porsche drivers, you know what to expect from them – they don’t give you an inch and they make you work hard for it. To come away and beat those guys at a track that’s really strong for them was really sweet for us.”
The GTLM class will take centre stage in this weekend’s Northeast Grand Prix at Lime Rock Park as the all-GT race boasts major championship implications for the class. In 2017’s race, Porsche claimed a 1-2 finish and will look to repeat history as they fight their way up the standings towards the Fords.
