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| Mazda Motorsports holds true to pre-race prediction that they intended to repeat their win in the last Shalen"s Six Hours At The Glen. Image Credit: Multimatic via Twitter (2021) |
Three teams that had stated positions of accomplishment before the GREEN Flag
waved to start The Sahlen’s Six Hours of the Glen
No. 55 Mazda Motorsports/Multimatic Mazda DPi co-drivers Jonathon Bomarito,
Oliver Jarvis, and Harry Tincknell post race comment on following through with
the prediction on a repeat win. The win was dedicated to John Valerio, an
engineer at Multimatic who perished in a road accident last month.
In the final round of pitstops, taken during the race’s final caution
period, Multimatic Motorsports’ Leena Gade, race engineer for the Mazda
RT24-P, elected to take fuel and a right-front tire, while the team’s
fastest rivals took on left-side tires.
The time saved was enough to jump the Mazda, shared by Tincknell, Oliver
Jarvis and endurance racer Jonathan Bomarito, to the front of the field. But
it meant that over the 37 minutes of green-flag running that remained,
Tincknell needed to go fast enough to hold off Olivier Pla in the #60 Meyer
Shank Racing Acura ARX-05, while also saving fuel, and also ensuring that he
went slow enough that the DPi cars would complete only 200 laps in the six
hours. Had he not received the one-lap-to-go white flag at the end of Lap
199, Tincknell would likely not have even finished in the top four, since
the Mazda ran out of fuel mid-way through its slowdown lap.
Holt, executive VP at Multimatic Special Vehicle Operations, said: “Harry
Tincknell was absolutely spectacular, best drive he’s ever given us in my
opinion.
“He balanced his fuel consumption against pace to keep Olivier behind by two
seconds for half an hour while also heeding our warnings of not breaking out
enough to cause an extra lap at the end.
“It was an impeccable display of controlled driving. He was sailing past us
into Turn 1 with absolutely no throttle [but] only losing less than a second
on his lap times.
“The white flag flew less than three seconds before we got to the line. Four
seconds earlier and we would have had to do two more laps, which we wouldn’t
have made.
“The number crunching going on back in Toronto [Multimatic’s home base] and
on top of the box was incredible, with triple redundancy on everything we
did. The data coming off the car was perfect and we made it home with Pla
right on our gearbox. Meyer Shank’s guys had banked some fuel, but so had we
and it was a flat-out last lap to the flag.
“We got out in front of the #60 and #01 [Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac] with
some great pit strategy and execution. In fact the boys over the wall were
perfect all day; we made all but a couple of our passes during the pitstops.
This was a race where every single member of this team made a significant
contribution, along with the three best pedalers in the series. It was
a pretty emotional moment when we crossed the line, having had Mid-Ohio
stolen from us in the same circumstances when we had a dominant car.”
This result means that fulltimers Tincknell and Jarvis are 31 points behind
Wayne Taylor Racing’s Ricky Taylor and Filipe Albuquerque heading into this
Friday’s race, also at the Glen. The WeatherTech 240 replaces the originally
schedule event at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park, which has been canceled
for a second year due to COVID restrictions.
Tincknell, who along with Bomarito and (ironically) Pla, scored Mazda’s
first IMSA Prototype win in this same event two years ago, said: “The whole
weekend was a fantastic team effort from Mazda and Multimatic. I think all
three of us did the job in the car but, my gosh, the mechanics and the guys
and girls on the stand were just incredible.
“To get me out in the lead with 40 minutes to go was the key moment. I knew
it was going to be very tight and I wasn’t going to be able to go flat out
all the way as we had to save fuel. I could see Oli [Pla] coming at the end
but I had the call on the last lap to go flat out so I knew at that point
that we would be OK.
“I ran out of fuel at Turn 7 on the slowing down lap, which just shows we
had the perfect strategy and the perfect engineering from Multimatic to get
us to the line.”
Jarvis added: “We’re in the championship hunt and we’ve said all along that
we need to take consistent podiums but we also want the wins. To do it in
this fashion where we didn’t have the quickest car – we made some big
changes as we went through the sessions and found the direction for the race
– really shows the strength of this team. We had to work harder this weekend
than we ever have before to get a chance of the win.
“To get it the team had to execute perfectly and the drivers couldn’t afford
any mistakes. This is a very special win.”
“I love sharing a car with these guys,” said Bomarito. “They’re competitors,
they’re warriors and they are flat out the whole time and that’s what it
takes in this class in this series.
“It was a flat out race with some brilliant fuel-saving finesse at the end.
I was listening on the radio up in the stand to all the math and
calculations. I wish everyone could hear and experience it, because it’s
neat to hear the engineers crunching the numbers and trying to calculate the
end of the race.
“If Harry had been four seconds further up the road we would have had to do
one more lap and probably would have run out of gas so that’s how close they
are calculating the fuel and that’s pretty cool to see.”
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NO. 3 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R post race comments on this six
hour challenge and win since 2014 by Corvette Racing.
We won the Watkins Glen 6 hour! Thanks to everyone at @CorvetteRacing and @AntonioGarcia_3 for a mega day! (Photos: Richard Prince) #Corvette pic.twitter.com/gymi9h77BP
— Jordan Taylor (@jordan10taylor) June 27, 2021
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The No. 96 Turner Motorsport BMW M6 GT3 is on a terror of late. The car has
won two of the last three GTD races – including Sunday’s Sahlen’s Six Hours
– and was running a strong second in the other race when a mechanical
failure stopped it with 10 minutes to go at Detroit.
With this win on Sunday's six hours,
Bill Auberlen sets a new mark for the all-time leader in IMSA wins (64).
Auberlen has collected four of these wins driving a BMW at Watkins
Glen.
No one else among the drivers entered for the IMSA WeatherTech 240 has more
than two.
During the post race winners press conference, Californian Bill Auberlen was
asked about the significance of his 64th win and the effects on winning a
2021 IMSA GTD championship.
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