Both Michael Shank Racing entries had strong finishes in the Bosch Engineering 250 at VIR as John Pew and Ian James teamed in the #6 Ford-Riley to come home fourth and Mark Patterson and Oswaldo Negri combined to move to third in the unofficial Rolex Team Championship standings with a ninth place result.
The two hour and forty-five minute event saw an early yellow flag, which sent much of the field to the pits, but both MSR cars remained on course, setting the stage for a three-way Trueman Award battle at the front with James and Patterson looking to usurp last weekend's winner Jim Matthews from the lead.
After an entertaining dice up front, both Michael Shank Racing cars took to the pits before the Grand-Am mandated 45-minute mark, with James strapping into the #6 as Negri took the helm of the #60 machine.
Despite the encouraging early laps, both drivers soon found their work cut out for them after a pair of external events set them back. For James, an airgun failure kept him in the pits longer than he'd hoped, and for Negri, a call from the engineers stand to verify his feeling that a tire was going down forced him into the pits for an extra pit stop, putting him a lap down.
“The car was just great up until that last yellow,” James said. “I was really fighting it at the end, but up until then the car was very racey and I made a lot of passes with it. The team strategy was spot-on, really well executed, and John got things off absolutely on the right foot at the start for us as well, so it was a good weekend. I was hoping to be able to keep it in contention for a podium, but this is still a great result.”
The up-front dice among Trueman Award combatants was soon broken up by a bevy of anxious entries looking to muscle their way to the front.
“The on-track behaviour of some of the Daytona Prototype drivers was pretty disappointing in some spots, but it was great to run up front and battle with John and Jim after the restart,” Patterson said. “These two-day events really reward teams that unload cars with the right set up because you only have so much time to improve on these weekends. Even though we weren't entirely happy with what we had yesterday, fortunately we speculated what the track was going to be like and made some significant gains for today. Oz drove a heck of a race and it's great to move to third in the championship standings as we look ahead to the race at Laguna Seca, which is a special place for me having made my first Daytona Prototype start there.”
Negri put in a big effort to pass the leader and then take off from the pack to move back into top-ten contention.
“I was really frustrated when the #59 car spun right in front of me because I had to come to a complete stop and I lost so much ground, but it was just another part of the day where we were playing catch-up after the tyre went down,” said Negri. “I wanted to be careful with the leader and not mess up his race, but at the same time I wanted to get by to get my lap back so I had to pick my spot and once I got past him, I was able to take off and work back into the top ten. It was a lot of work! But I also kept the championship in my mind the whole time.
“Obviously we were hoping to finish better than ninth, and had the car to do that, but this was a great comeback to take another top ten and I'm happy to be back to third in the points.”
