ESM Patrón Returns to Podium

The No. 1 team earned its first podium since the 12 Hours of Sebring, and the No. 2 finished in eighth place.
 
From the pole, Sharp in the No. 1 Tequila Patrón HPD looked to keep the prototype class behind him at the start. He fell to third and ran there through the first caution period 10 minutes into the race. Sharp pitted for the first time on Lap 21 during the third caution for tires and fuel.
 
During the yellow flag pit stops, Sharp assumed the race lead on Lap 23. On the restart, Sharp was shuffled back to third behind two Daytona Prototype (DP) race cars. During the fourth caution flag, Sharp pitted on Lap 39 for tires, fuel and driver change to Dalziel.
 
Dalziel worked his way into second position by Lap 46, shortly after the fifth caution. Five laps later on the restart, an aggressive Dalziel held of the No. 60 DP to maintain second. On the sixth and final restart – and hoping to have a repeat of the previous restart – Dalziel fought but ceded the position on the front straight by the DP car. Dalziel settled into third and finished the race there.

 

“It is nice to be back on the podium,” Sharp added. “It has been a lot longer than I thought it would be. Third place is a great rebound for the team. It is funny, you go to some of these races and you expect it is going to go well and it hasn’t for us. Even though Road America is my favorite track, I didn’t expect that this, with the long straights, was going to be good place for us.”
 
Ed Brown started the race for the No. 2 Tequila Patrón HPD from the fifth position. Brown maintained a top-10 spot through his stint. He raced for more than an hour, and nearly half his stint was under caution. Brown pitted on Lap 23 for tires, fuel and driver change to Johannes van Overbeek.
 
From the 10^th position, van Overbeek reached fourth by Lap 39. During the restart on Lap 43, van Overbeek fought to maintain position but was swarmed by the DP machines and found himself back in ninth place.
 
In a battle of the P2 machines, van Overbeek was maintaining his racing line behind the No. 42 machine of Gustavo Yacaman. While swerving through traffic ahead of van Overbeek, the No. 42 veered down on the nose of the No. 2, which caused the former to spin off course and bring out another caution. There was minor damage to the nose No. 2 Tequila Patrón.
 
While under caution, van Overbeek pitted for fuel and Continental Tires while the team inspected the damage. He returned to the field and advanced from ninth to eighth.

 

“In the end, all the restarts killed us,” van Overbeek stated. “We have a difficult time defending on the restarts. When you get behind the Daytona Prototypes, the only places you can pass are the really dangerous high-risk places. Toward the end, I had a couple of good runs on (Scott) Pruett (DP car) but he’s been around the block too many times and never gave me an opportunity to pass him clean. I could have done it dirty, but I had enough of that today.”
 
Next up for Extreme Speed Motorsports is the Lone Star Le Mans at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas on Sept 19-20.  During the Lone Star Le Mans weekend, the Florida-based team will compete in both the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship race and the FIA WEC Six Hours of Circuit of The Americas.