Reigning IMSA WeatherTech GT Daytona (GTD) Titlists Russell Ward and Philip Ellis Begin Championship Rebound in the No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 with Solid Points Day in Qualifying for Saturday’s 100-Minute IMSA WeatherTech Championship Race on the Streets of Long Beach.
LONG BEACH, California – Two-time and reigning IMSA GT Daytona (GTD) champions Winward Racing and team driver Russell Ward secured some solid points in the season-long GTD standings with a fifth-place qualifying effort Friday for tomorrow’s Grand Prix of Long Beach for the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
Ward briefly held the GTD pole position halfway through the quick 15-minute session and then locked down fifth on the grid with his second and final flying lap in the closing minutes.
Ward, who turned a top lap time of 1:18.705 (90.017 mph) on his tenth of 12 qualifying laps – just 0.001 of a second shy of the GTD championship leader in fourth place – rolls off from the inside of GTD row three for tomorrow’s sprint. The 100-minute timed race is the shortest of the year on the IMSA GTD schedule.
The No. 57 team and both Ward and co-driver Philip Ellis earned 26 points for the top five run in the time trials. The nice tally helps the team recover from a challenging race last month at the 12 Hours of Sebring when the No. 57 was forced to retire in the race’s early stages after getting caught up in an incident between two GTD Pro entries.
Ward was just behind the accident scene in the No. 57 and one of the still spinning GTD Pro cars rolled right into his path. Ward was uninjured in the contact incident, but he, Ellis and the No. 57 entry earned minimal points, failing to finish a race through no fault of their own for the first time in several seasons.
Friday’s solid points haul in qualifying was the first step in the Winward team racing back into the fight for a third-straight GTD championship. The Winward team and its drivers have basically moved to within three points of the top five in the GTD standings with two teams ranked ahead in the season-long standings not competing this weekend at Long Beach.
Saturday’s Grand Prix of Long Beach for the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship is scheduled to start at 1:05 p.m. PDT. Live television coverage on the flagship NBC network begins at 4 p.m. EDT/1 p.m. PDT and is also available in livestream coverage on Peacock and, for international viewers, at www.IMSA.tv.
“Long Beach is all about kind of getting through the race, but we are pretty happy with what we have. I am just going to get it to the pitstop tomorrow, and that’s really the plan. Definitely, with the Michelin tire, it felt a little bit different this year, and I think that showed in the lap times. This track is such a low energy track, and it takes a couple of laps to get everything up to temperature, and then you only really get two or three good laps. I feel like I definitely could have been one or two spots higher, but we’ll have to get them in the race tomorrow. We’ve had our bad luck for the year, and now it’s time to just press on, race the racetrack and get the most out of it.”
