Ham started second and led 12 laps during his opening stint before turning the car over to Tremblay. After picking up the first-ever Rolex Series GT victory for Mazda three weeks ago in Mexico City, Ham and Tremblay stretched their lead in the GT driver standings out to 17 points over Porsche GT3 pairing Carlos de Quesada and Jean-Francois Dumoulin.
“Overall, it was a very good race,” Ham said. “Everything went according to plan. I did the first stint and my job was to keep the car clean and stay as close to the front as possible, which we were able to do. We called our pit-stop right. We pitted at the right time so we just needed one stop, and at the end we were able to bring it home. When we did the stop I think Sylvain was in sixth place, and he just gradually kept moving up. It was a great win for Mazda and the RX-8.”
For the third consecutive outing, Valentine and Lally managed to substantially improve on their result from the previous race with a second-place run. The duo opened the year with 17th in the Rolex 24 at
Daytona before taking eighth earlier this month in Mexico City.
“We had a really good car and by far the best Porsche in the field, hands down,” Lally stated. “We did a decent job with it. We came up just a little bit short, and that's a little bit disappointing. I wish we had a little more for those guys at the end, but I don't think we could have planned out the race any better than we did.”
Bryce Miller and Dirk Werner bounced back from a cut tyre to complete the class podium in the Farnbacher Loles Motorsports Porsche GT3. The result marked the third successive top-four finish for the squad, which is in its first full Rolex Series season. It was also the debut Rolex Series rostrum for Werner and Miller.
![Auberlen/Sigal/Alhadeff/Wendlinger - Sigalsport Riley-BMW [pic credit: Grand-Am media]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/285932.jpg)
