Last weekend’s round of the 2018 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship marked the first race of the season in which Cadillac failed to put a driver on the podium, and only the second race that wasn’t won by a Cadillac, as Helio Castroneves and Ricky Taylor earned their first victory in the No. 7 Acura Team Penske car. The No. 6 Acura of Juan Pablo Montoya and Dane Cameron came in just behind it in second place, while the No. 77 Mazda of Tristan Nunez and Oliver Jarvis took third.
Cadillac DPi-V.R race cars nabbed fourth (No. 5, Filipe Albuquerque and Joao Barbosa), fifth (No. 10, Jordan Taylor and Renger Van Der Zande), and eighth (No. 31, Felipe Nasr and Eric Curran). The No. 90 Spirit of Daytona Cadillac DPi-V.R, which sustained heavy damage at the Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring, sat this round out as it did Long Beach.
While brothers Ricky and Jordan Taylor swept each of the first five IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship rounds last year in the No. 10 Konica Minolta Cadillac, this season, neither brother had managed to eke out a win until last weekend’s race at Mid-Ohio. Yet it was Ricky Taylor in the Acura – not Jordan Taylor in the Cadillac – who landed on the highest point of the podium. The No. 7 Acura DPi he pilots with Helio Castrovenes traded on-and-off for the lead with the No. 6 Acura car, with one or the other leading for each of the race’s 125 laps.
Next up on the 2018 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship calendar is the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix, June 1st through the 2nd.
Comment
Let’s hope for a better showing for the Cadillac’s for the next race. It looks like the Cadillac’s are under power compared to the rest of the field.
IMO this year’s win are from pit strategy and not really performance.