Elkhart Lake, Wis. (August 8, 2021) — Ricky Taylor and Filipe Albuquerque made the most of a challenging afternoon for the No. 10 Konica Minolta Acura ARX-05 in the IMSA SportsCar Weekend at Road America. Their fourth place finish means that they maintain a 41-point lead over the second place No. 31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac DPi in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship with a total of 2,380 points.
Ricky Taylor started the sprint on the front row and made a daring dive around the outside of Turn 1 at the start, using every bit of his skill to maintain control and keep second place. He drove consistently to hold that position through the first round of stops and a pair of early cautions and restarts.
A minute past the halfway mark, Filipe Albuquerque climbed aboard and filtered out in P3 thanks to an alternative strategy by the No. 60 Acura that saw them take the lead. Albuquerque had to make an unscheduled stop with 24 minutes remaining. After a close battle with the championship rival No. 55 Mazda resulted in contact entering the Turn 9 Carousel, a puncture necessitated a tire change on the following lap.
After the No. 60 made a late additional stop for fuel, they emerged in fourth place ahead of Albuquerque in fifth. It wasn’t the Road America victory that the team had been hoping for, but with seconds remaining, Filipe took fourth position from the sister Acura car to maximise championship points under the circumstances.
“Tough day here at Road America,” expressed Ricky Taylor. “The streak is still in the wrong direction here for the No. 10 Konica Minolta Acura ARX-05 Wayne Taylor Racing team with a win at Road America just eluding us. But, the team did a great job once again. I feel like had we gotten some track position on the start and led the race we could’ve controlled it a bit better. The No. 31 did a great job today keeping us behind. We tried everything we could and unfortunately a puncture caught us out. We recovered well. The team kept pushing and we kept trying. Our friends at Meyer Shank, Acura teammates, really helped us out at the end to give us some extra points. We come out of it still in the points lead and if we can have bad days like this, hopefully this is our worst day, we’re in good shape. We’ve had that little buffer, now we can’t afford any more of these. We can get it out of the way and move forward to Laguna Seca and hopefully have a good run.”
“Good start from Ricky putting the No. 31 under pressure,” said Filipe Albuquerque. “I think we had a really, really good car. In clean air we were a little quicker, but we were stuck behind the No. 31 which obviously had great pace. It was a really tight race, with a chance to use the traffic to make a pass and get the position. From then on we would’ve been in control, but that didn’t happen. The contact with the No. 55 Mazda was a racing incident and it is what it is. It’s very frustrating that we got the puncture because it completely took away the possibility to fight for the win or eventually finish P2. At this point in the championship all the points are important. We are still leading but with a more narrow window. The car is good and we will still compete for wins.”
“I don’t know what this track does to us, but we never seem able to win here,” reflected team owner Wayne Taylor. “We had a good race and unfortunately we had a tire go flat and that put us at the back. We managed to finish fourth and managed to maintain the lead in the championship, so that’s all that counts.”
The No. 10 Konica Minolta Acura ARX-05 2021 returns to the track for the Hyundai Monterey Sports Car Championship on September 10-12. Practice begins on Friday at 7:30 p.m. ET. Green flag will wave on Sunday, September 12 at 4:10 p.m. ET with live coverage on TrackPass on NBC Sports Gold.
About Konica Minolta
Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. is reshaping and revolutionizing the Workplace of the Future. The company guides and supports its customers’ digital transformation through its expansive office technology portfolio, including IT Services (All Covered), content services, managed print services and industrial and commercial print solutions. Konica Minolta has been included on CRN’s MSP 500 list nine times and The World Technology Awards recently named the company a finalist in the IT Software category. Konica Minolta has been recognized as the #1 Brand for Customer Loyalty in the MFP Office Copier Market by Brand Keys for fourteen consecutive years, and received Keypoint Intelligence’s BLI 2021 A3 Line of The Year Award and BLI 2021-2023 Most Color Consistent A3 Brand Award for its bizhub i-Series. Konica Minolta, Inc. has been named to the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index for nine consecutive years and has spent four years on the Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World list. Konica Minolta partners with its clients to give shape to ideas and works to bring value to our society. For more information, please visit us online and follow Konica Minolta on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter. Wayne Taylor Racing’s existing lineup of partners that also features Harrison Contracting, Acura Motorsports , Hammer Nutrition and CIT.
