DANVILLE, VA (9 Oct. 2021) – Gilbert Korthoff Motorsports’ third foray into IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship competition resulted in an 11th -place finish in Saturday’s Michelin GT Challenge at Virginia International Raceway.
Guy Cosmo and Mike Skeen co-drove the No. 32 Mercedes-AMG GT3 in the GT Daytona class, covering all but one of the 85 laps in the two-hour, 40-minute contest.
“For our first weekend with this revamped team, I think we learned a lot,” Cosmo said. “We just didn’t have the pace this weekend. So we took a little bit of a ‘Hail Mary’ with the strategy to see if it could get us anything, but ultimately, we finished where we would have, anyway.”
Cosmo started eighth and settled into 10th position in the early laps. He pitted at the 47-minute mark, with Skeen taking over in 13th position.
“The opening stint was real exciting,” Cosmo said. “The track was still damp in a number of sections, so racing side by side was challenging. I got into a groove early on. It was the same issue that we’ve been battling this weekend, we just didn’t have quite enough front end to make the car turn as much as we needed to, but we were doing alright. A couple of guys got a run on me, as we were slipping and sliding coming down into 17, heading into Turn 1.
“When somebody gets alongside, you’ve got to leave them room, but then you’re off-line and on the damp part of the track,” said Cosmo. “Losing a position is one thing, but you also lose time because you had to slow up. We did what we could; we just didn’t have enough grip. When we got Skeen in the car, we were hoping he could let it rip, but he was facing the same thing.”
The race had its lone caution at the 1:15 mark. While most of the GTD competitors took to pit lane for service, Gilbert Korthoff Motorsports opted to stay out, moving Skeen up to second in the class. When the race resumed with 1:14 remaining, Skeen ran second before making his final pit stop. Skeen returned to the event in 13th, gaining two positions in the closing laps.
“We knew going into the race that we weren’t starting up front, so we had to make it up somewhere,” Skeen said. “We had a decent pace at the start of each stint. Once the yellow fell, it was a matter of seeing where we fell on the fuel. We made a guess, but came up a little shorter than we wanted to. Still, it was a decent, clean result, and the car came home in one piece.”
Cosmo qualified 10th in Friday’s opening session, running 1:44.790-seconds. Since the team is not running for the championship, Skeen ran two easy laps in the second session that awards GTD points, opting not to post a competitive lap.
Only one race remains on the 2021 WeatherTech Championship season, the Motul Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta on Saturday, Nov. 13.
