DANVILLE, VA (20 June 2022) – Stephen Cameron Racing managed to match its best showing of the season for Guy Cosmo and Chris Cagnazzi despite a weekend marred by a slew of racing incidents that led to a series of lengthy caution periods and red flags in both of the one-hour SRO Pirelli GT4 America races.
Guy Cosmo and Chris Cagnazzi finished 13th in Pro-Am and 28th overall in Saturday’s race in the No. 39 Presidio Mercedes-AMG GT4, and wound up taking fourth in Pro-Am and sixth overall on Sunday.
“A weekend of chaos and lost opportunities,” Cosmo said. “It’s a shame that we didn’t get a shot at doing any real racing because of the contact on track. The drivers are driving so desperately that no one is able to pull off any passes without contact, and they are putting themselves in bad positions resulting in really big crashes.”
With the race delayed by a red flag on the opening lap, Cagnazzi pitted early in the Saturday race while running ninth. Cosmo set fast lap early in his stint before the race went back to yellow with 26 minutes remaining. Cosmo was eighth but was caught up in a big pack at the restart. While making a clean pass exiting turn three, Cosmo’s opponent darted left making heavy contact with him, forcing them both off track into the grass.. The incident cost him 23 positions. Unfortunately, the race went back to yellow with 17 minutes remaining, and ended under caution.
“A competitor had to catch a big slide, and darted over to the left,” Cosmo said. “He said he didn’t know where I was yet he moved over and clobbered me hard. I came back on track behind his car – which was badly wounded – and the entire field freight-trained us and we couldn’t get back up to speed to get back in line.”
Cosmo gained two positions before the race-ending yellow waved.
“Unfortunately, that ruined the best run Chris and I had going to date,” Cosmo said. “That’s a testament to the pit strategy with the Cameron Racing team, they did a great job managing our pit stop.”
Cosmo started fifth on Sunday, with the race red-flagged for an hour after a massive incident on the opening lap. Cosmo pitted shortly after another caution followed a brief run of green-flag racing. Cagnazzi returned to the race running fourth in Pro-Am, and he held off another competitor to hold the position before a race-ending caution waved with 8:30 remaining.
“Tough weekend,” Cosmo said. “We were competitive, which was nice. We finished fourth in class today, so despite the setbacks we can go forward and move on to Watkins Glen.”
Cagnazzi also competed in the GT4 class in the GT America powered by AWS sprint races. He finished sixth in the Saturday race. On Sunday, he was running fifth in class before being forced off course in the Oak Tree Turn, costing him nine positions. He went on to finish 21st overall and 14th in class.
Next up for the SRO competitors will be Watkins Glen International, with a full slate of GT3 and GT4 competition on July 22-24.
