LEXINGTON, Ohio (May 6, 2018) – An opening lap tangle at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course hindered CORE autosport’s progress in the fourth round of the IMSA WeatherTech Championship. Without any full-course cautions to make up the lost ground, a 13th-place finish was the result.
Starting from 14th, Bennett got caught up in a tangle amongst three Prototypes and was nearly collected by the trailing pack of GTLM cars. He made contact with the car ahead of him, damaging the nose of the No. 54 Composite Resources / Flex-Box ORECA 07 LM P2 and was hit from behind as well. Bennett was able to continue, but fell behind the slower GT cars and was driving with a wounded car.
When he pitted to hand the car over to Colin Braun, the team was able to replace the nose, but Braun returned to the track in danger of going two laps down. He fought hard to keep the No. 54 in play, hoping for a full-course yellow and a chance of a wavy-by, but it never materialized and he crossed the finish line 13th.
Another street race is up next for CORE autosport. The Detroit Grand Prix, June 1 – 2, takes place on the roads around Belle Isle. It will air on FS2, Saturday, June 2, at 12:30pm ET.
JON BENNETT
Driver: No. 54 ORECA 07 LM P2
“Starts are always a bit of controlled chaos. We have a lot of different types of cars and it makes for very interesting starts. As we entered the third corner, several prototypes tangled ahead of me. There was a road blockage. I wasn’t able to stop as quick as the car ahead of me and we made light front-to-rear contact and I continued.
“Unfortunately, it turns out we lost some parts on the car that really hampered the performance. We had some handling issues from the lack of dive planes and a big hole in our nose, which hurt the top speed.
“Kudos to our team for doing a really quick nose change. Colin got out there and drove to win. I was quite impressed with our pace relative to the front-runners even though we weren’t on the same lap or same pit sequence.
“When you’re just barely a lap down, it’s super important to stay competitive, because the next caution period could be the one that gets you back in the race. We did what we could, but no yellows came. It is what it is. We’ll pick up the pieces, learn from it and head for Detroit.”
COLIN BRAUN
Driver: ORECA 07 LM P2“The guys did a great job getting the nose changed quickly. That mitigated the damage on the first lap, because it was all on the nose. We didn’t lose too much time over what a normal pit stop would have been. Jon had to do a stint with the car damaged like that though, which was tough to solider through.
“When you have an early incident like that, it’d be nice to get a yellow, get in the pit lane and back out on the lead lap with a car that’s 100 percent. Even after we got the nose changed and got back out we still needed a yellow. We were a lap down. If we’d had a yellow, we would have gotten a wave by and back on the lead lap. That’s all we needed to get back in the game.
“We had good pit stops and good strategy, just not the luck.”