Alas, another mostly unwatched Sports Car season
closes its books...
Having already alluded to the Fact-Uh-mundo'
that I missed the entirety 'O this year's Petit Le Mans Sports Car season
finale, (Oct 1st) purusing Racer's Marshall Pruett's typical Yeoman-like race
report, it appears there were NO real surprises, with the exception of who the
overall winner was, along with the GTD *Daytona) class winner's
disqualification (DSQ) for one of its drivers not meeting the minimum Seat-time
driving requirement.
Or Y'all can simply skip here to see the full
rundown, which appropriately, this year's IndyCar champion led their contingent
'O drivers: 2016 Petit Le Mans race results
Whilst upon purusing said results, it appears
that my Hometown Boyz',
the Team Seattle/Alex Job Racing (AJR) #23 Porsche
911 Panzerwagon finished P27 Overall.
As la Femme Fatale Cristina Nielsen completed
her three hours minimum drive-time to capture her first major championship,
alongside co-driver Alessandro
Balzan. Being the second consecutive for Scuderia
Corsa, having won the class last year with (Townsend) T' Bell & Bill
Sweedler at the keyboard.
And thanxs to Marshall's reporting, I just
learned that MSR will depart the Prototype ranks in favour of running Honda's
two car "Works" Acura NSX GTD programme next season, for which it
seems only appropriate, and symbiotic that Mike Shank & Co would get to
close the Daytona Prototype era on top in their P2 chassis. While next year's
DPi class sounds quite promising with Cadillac, Mazda and Nissan all joining
the fray.
As the Acura NSX programme looks to be in
good hands with the announcement of Timothy Keene as General manager for the
Honda effort, who's accustomed to winning races and championships, with a quite
respectful record being accomplished during his Chip Ganassi Racing tenure.
As there'll
actually be meaningful winter testing, with the Daytona Prototype International
(DPi) machines working out their kinks, while at least one new manufacturer
will join the GTD ranks, with possibly Nissan's BAD ARSE GTR GT3 machines also
joining the lower tier Gran Tourismo entrants next year?
