DETROIT, Mich. (June 2, 2018) – CORE autosport triple stinted its Continental Tires and performed two driver changes en route to finishing 12th in the latest round of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Challenge.
Starting from 13th on the grid, Jon Bennett kept his nose clean through the opening laps and through a restart from caution. He was able to hand the car over to Colin Braun in 12th and on the lead lap. To ensure Braun would exit the pits in front of the leaders, the team did not change tires on the No. 54 Composite Resources / Flex-Box ORECA 07 LM P2.
The decision worked; Braun held off the leaders and moved up to 10th in his stint.
With less than 30 minutes left in the race, the team brought Braun in for the final pit stop and put Bennett back in to score as many Trueman Award points as possible before the finish. The Trueman Award is a season points championship for pro-am driver lineups.
Once again, to achieve the quickest pit stop possible, the team did not change tires on the No. 54. On the same tires as he started the 100-minute race with, Bennett finished strong in 12th place.
The Prototype side of the CORE autosport operation has a brief break until the Sahlen’s Six Hours of the Glen at Watkins Glen, June 29 – July 1. CORE’s GTLM operation has already arrived in France, to take on the 24 Hours of Le Mans as partners of Porsche Motorsport.
JON BENNETT
Driver: No. 54 ORECA 07 LM P2
“The start was good. As always, you get prepared for what could happen, but it was clean. I slotted into a decent pace. I turned my fastest lap during the race, so that was good, personally, for me.
“I handed the car over to Colin on the lead lap, but just barely. Colin did an amazing job working his magic so we could stay on the lead lap. The way the race was unfolding, the multiple strategies being played by other teams, we made a mid-race decision to put me back in the car and to leverage that to gain Trueman points. Ultimately, not the result we were looking for, but we did make some gains in Trueman points.
“We were leveraging all the strategy we could to get to the front. Doing a pit stop without a tire change was good for my final stint in terms of no cold-tire out laps, but I could tell at the end of the race that the car was unhappy with the tires. I adjusted my driving so we could have a good, safe finish and get the most out of the weekend.”
COLIN BRAUN
Driver: ORECA 07 LM P2“My stint was pretty good. I came out a few seconds ahead of the leader. It was fun to push hard enough to keep them behind us. Sometimes in traffic, they closed the gap a little, but overall I think we had the same pace as the leaders. The guys did good stops and Jon did a nice job driving.
“It was good to get Jon back in at the end and try to collect as many Trueman points as we can. Obviously that’s a goal for us. Once we realized that we weren’t going to be on the podium, we swapped our focus to getting as many Trueman. points as possible.”