2019 Northeast Grand Prix
The 2019 Northeast Grand Prix was a sports car race sanctioned by the International Motor Sports Association (IMSA). The race was held at Lime Rock Park in Lakeville, Connecticut on July 20th, 2019, as the eighth round of the 2019 WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, and the fourth round of the 2019 WeatherTech Sprint Cup.
Background
This race is the first of two GT-only races on the 2019 IMSA calendar, in which the prototype classes, Daytona Prototype international (DPi) and Le Mans Prototype (LMP2), will not be taking part. This is in accordance with IMSA's philosophy of occasionally rotating classes out of certain races to reduce costs.
On July 11th, 2019, IMSA released a technical bulletin regarding the Balance of Performance for the race. The GT Le Mans (GTLM) balance of performance constraints would remain as they were in the previous round at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. In the GT Daytona (GTD) class, after winning the previous round, the BMW M6 GT3 was given a power reduction of 12 horsepower, as well as a 2-liter fuel capacity reduction and a restriction of turbo boost. The Ferrari 488 GT3 and the Porsche 911 GT3 R were made 10 and five kilograms lighter, respectively.[1]
Entries
On July 10th, 2019, the entry list for the event was released, featuring 22 cars. There were eight cars entered in GTLM, and 14 in GTD. The most notable change to the grid included the return of Blancpain GT World Challenge America full-time team Wright Motorsports, with drivers Anthony Imperato and Porsche Junior Professional driver Matt Campbell. Pfaff Motorsports regular driver Scott Hargrove would sit out the Lime Rock Park event as well as the following event at Road America, replaced instead by Porsche Junior driver Dennis Olsen for the Lime Rock event. Olsen and Campbell are set to switch places for Road America.[2][3] Due to this event happening 50 years and one day after the Apollo 11 moon landing, GTD team Magnus Racing decided to commemorate the anniversary of the mission by launching a one-off livery designed to look like the Saturn V rocket, and run under the number 11. As Magnus Racing usually ran under car number 44, the team received special dispensation by IMSA to count the points they would score as number 11 towards their full-season points under number 44.[4]
Race report
Qualifying results
Pole positions in each class are indicated in bold and by ‡.
| Pos. | Class | No. | Team | Driver | Time | Gap | Grid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GTLM | 912 | Porsche GT Team | Laurens Vanthoor | 49.133 | _ | 1 ‡ |
| 2 | GTLM | 911 | Porsche GT Team | Nick Tandy | 49.185 | +0.052s | 2 |
| 3 | GTLM | 25 | BMW Team RLL | Connor De Phillippi | 49.322 | +0.189s | 3 |
| 4 | GTLM | 66 | Ford Chip Ganassi Racing | Dirk Müller | 49.458 | +0.325s | 4 |
| 5 | GTLM | 3 | Corvette Racing | Antonio García | 49.690 | +0.557s | 5 |
| 6 | GTLM | 4 | Corvette Racing | Oliver Gavin | 49.748 | +0.615s | 6 |
| 7 | GTLM | 67 | Ford Chip Ganassi Racing | Ryan Briscoe | 49.808 | +0.675s | 7 |
| 8 | GTLM | 24 | BMW Team RLL | John Edwards | 49.864 | +0.731s | 8 |
| 9 | GTD | 86 | Meyer-Shank Racing with Curb Agajanian | Trent Hindman | 51.456 | +2.323s ‡ | 9 |
| 10 | GTD | 33 | Mercedes-AMG Team Riley Motorsports | Ben Keating | 51.482 | +2.349s | 10 |
| 11 | GTD | 48 | Paul Miller Racing | Corey Lewis | 51.532 | +2.399s | 11 |
| 12 | GTD | 96 | Turner Motorsport | Robby Foley | 51.536 | +2.403s | 12 |
| 13 | GTD | 9 | Pfaff Motorsports | Zacharie Robichon | 51.575 | +2.442s | 13 |
| 14 | GTD | 14 | AIM Vasser-Sullivan | Richard Heistand | 51.642 | +2.509s | 14 |
| 15 | GTD | 73 | Park Place Motorsports | Marco Seefried | 51.661 | +2.528s | 15 |
| 16 | GTD | 63 | Scuderia Corsa | Cooper MacNeil | 51.719 | +2.586s | 16 |
| 17 | GTD | 91 | Wright Motorsports | Anthony Imperato | 51.785 | +2.652s | 17 |
| 18 | GTD | 76 | Compass Racing | Matt Plumb | 52.008 | +2.875s | 18 |
| 19 | GTD | 57 | Heinricher Racing with Meyer-Shank | Christina Nielsen | 52.059 | +2.926s | 19 |
| 20 | GTD | 11 | Magnus Racing | John Potter | 52.226 | +3.093s | 20 |
| 21 | GTD | 12 | AIM Vasser-Sullivan | Frankie Montecalvo | 52.236 | +3.103s | 21 |
| Source:[5] | |||||||
Results
Class winners are denoted in bold and ‡.
References
- ^ Dagys, John (11 July 2019). "BMW M6 GT3 Pegged Back for Lime Rock". sportscar365.com. John Dagys Media. Retrieved 16 July 2019.
- ^ Klein, Jamie (9 July 2019). "Wright Motorsports to make IMSA return at Lime Rock". motorsport.com. Motorsport Network. Retrieved 16 July 2019.
- ^ Dagys, John (15 July 2019). "Olsen, Campbell to Replace Hargrove in Pfaff Porsche". sportscar365.com. John Dagys Media. Retrieved 16 July 2019.
- ^ Klein, Jamie (18 July 2019). "Magnus Racing to run Apollo 11 tribute livery at Lime Rock". motorsport.com. Motorsport Network. Retrieved 26 July 2019.
- ^ "19-20 July 2019 Northeast Grand Prix Results -- Qualifying.PDF" (PDF). 19 July 2019. Retrieved 24 July 2019.