Just a three-hour drive from the team’s Rock Hill, South Carolina shop, CORE autosport is taking on the 3.27-mile, 17-turn VIRginia International Raceway in the latest round of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
In the highly competitive GT Daytona class, Jon Bennett was given qualifying duties for the No. 54 Flex-Box / Composite Resources Porsche 911 GT3 R. Bennett was 13th quick early in the 15-minute session, but the competition stepped up the pace, knocking him back to 15th.
Bennett opted to pit with time left on the clock and save his tires for the race. He locked in 15th on the GTD grid with a fast lap of 1:46.106 (110.945mph).
Bennett will take the opening stint for tomorrow’s Michelin GT Challenge at VIR. He’ll hand the car over to Colin Braun to close out the two-hour and 40-minute race featuring only the GT Le Mans and GT Daytona cars. The event will be broadcast live on FS1, at 1:30pm ET.
JON BENNETT
“Our engineering team of Jeff Braun and Colin Mason along with my co-driver Colin Braun did a great job as always. Our Porsche GT3 R seems to be really well suited to this circuit. Colin had fast practice times, and relative to my peers, I’ve been quicker than I have been at other tracks.
“I did a fairly good qualifying lap, four laps into the session. I realized that I probably wouldn’t eclipse that, so we decided to stop a little early to save our equipment. I still have a little work to do to get up to the pace of the others in the class. In terms of personal effort, I did well and we’ll see how the race unfolds. That said, I really like the way things are unfolding so far this weekend.”