ELKHART LAKE, Wis. (August 8, 2021) – Excellent strategy set CORE autosport on a course for victory at Road America. A well-timed pit stop helped CORE leap the entire LMP3 field and take its second win of the 2021 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
Starting from fourth on the grid, Bennett had an excellent start and was able to pick up a spot on the opening lap.
Shortly thereafter, CORE took advantage of an early full-course caution to pit Jon for a splash of fuel. But it was the second full-course yellow that changed everything. Bennett was able to duck onto pitlane before the caution came out and the pits were closed. He was the only LMP3 car to do so.
Braun got into the car during the stop and came out of the pits in fifth. The rest of the LMP3 field had to wait until the full-course yellow was over to pit. When the green flag came back out, they all came in and Braun took the lead.
Fortunately, there were no more full-course yellows and Braun, knowing he had the fuel to make it to the finish, was able to build an insurmountable gap to second place. Braun cruised to a 22.243-second victory.
CORE has a long wait until the WeatherTech Championship LMP3 season finale: Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta takes place November 11 – 13.
Jon Bennett
Driver: No. 54 Composite Resources / CrowdStrike Ligier LM P320“From inside the car, it’s hard to tell where you are relative to all the other cars, but it was a good start. I got inside the 74 and we were side-by-side going into Turn One. I was a skosh ahead and then we made contact. I fell back in line. Then it settled out and I was okay with where we were and just wanted to turn good lap times and make progress so we could hand over the car to Colin in a good spot.
“The team made a great strategy to pull me in for that second stop, Colin and I had a great exchange and Colin road into the sunset.
“One of the great things about CORE is all Colin and I have to do is drive the car. The strategy is always handled perfectly. It’s basically ‘Simon Says.’ You follow directions and we usually have a happy ending.”
Colin Braun
Driver: No. 54 Composite Resources / CrowdStrike Ligier LM P320“I was really excited about getting into P1. You never know how things will shake out when you come out of the pits under yellow. It was chaos because we decided to pit and the yellow came out, but we were pitting already. Once I got in and we cycled through the yellow, (race engineer) Tyler [Neff] said we were leading the race. I was happy, but it was straight to work. I pushed hard at times to build that gap and then was pretty cautious in traffic and tried to manage the gap the rest of the time and be smart about it.
“I never want to say ‘we got this,’ until we cross the finish line, that will set you up for disappointment. The guys had great pit stops and we knew that we had a pretty good car. Once we got through that first run and I knew that we had good pace, I figured even if we had some restarts, we’d be okay.
“I’m proud of the guys and proud of Jon. We’re kind of back in the championship hunt I think coming into the last race. It’s going to be exciting.”