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, Tudor United SportsCar Championship, round 5 in Watkins Glen/USA, Race report
Watkins Glen: Double victory for the Porsche 911 RSR at six-hour classic

Six hours of excitement and drama – and the greatest success of the season for Porsche in the Tudor United SportsCar Championship: On the storied race track in Watkins Glen, Porsche celebrated a double GTLM-class victory with the classic 911 sports car at an eventful race.

After 157 laps on the 5.472-kilometre circuit in the US state of New York, Porsche works driver Wolf Henzler (Germany) and his American teammate Bryan Sellers won the fifth round of the popular US sports car championship with the 470 hp 911 RSR campaigned by the Falken Tire customer team. Clinching second place for Porsche North America was the newly-crowned Le Mans winner Earl Bamber (New Zealand) and Jörg Bergmeister (Germany). And top honours in the DEKRA Green Challenge Award also went to Porsche: The 911 RSR manned by Patrick Pilet (France) and Nick Tandy (Great Britain), which is based on the seventh generation of the iconic 911 sports car, was distinguished as the GT car with the best overall efficiency. The Porsche 911 RSR features the smallest engine capacity in the GT field. Its road-going 911 GT3 sibling is also appreciated by customers all over the world for its excellent ratio of performance to fuel consumption.

Patrick Pilet was the first to turn heads at the traditional six-hour race. The Porsche works driver from France took up the race from the fifth grid spot in his class and on a wet track promptly swept into the lead in the first lap with sensational overtaking manoeuvres. Driving on slicks he then proceeded to pull ahead of his pursuers in the first hour of the race to hold the lead by almost a minute. Also in the first lap, Earl Bamber had to overcome the first setback: when an opponent spun directly in front of him, he was unable to avoid contact and damaged the front splitter which was later replaced. Down by a lap, he took up the chase. But the drama didn’t stop there. No sooner had the rain stopped and the track begun to dry when even heavier showers returned. The result was multiple accidents which saw the safety car deployed. At one point the track was covered in so much water that for safety reasons the field was red-flagged and had to return to the pits.

The final decision only came in the last race hour. Wolf Henzler moved up into the top spot because, unlike his competitors, when the race went green again it was not necessary for him to make another pit stop. Patrick Pilet was running a promising second place. But just before the next caution phase, the Frenchman had to hand his 911 RSR off to Nick Tandy, otherwise he would have exceeded his permitted driving time and incurred a penalty. After this unscheduled pit stop a podium spot seemed out of reach. But Earl Bamber came to rescue. On a wet track, in a spectacular manoeuvre, he overtook precisely the opponent with whom he had become entangled in the first lap and crowned his first start at Watkins Glen with second place.

In the GTD class, Americans Andy Lally and John Potter joined forces with Marco Seefried (Austria) to score second place. They contested the race for the Magnus Racing customer team in the Porsche 911 GT America, a vehicle developed specifically for the Tudor United SportsCar Championship.

Comments on the race
Marco Ujhasi, Overall Project Leader GT Works Motorsport: “That was an incredibly intensive race with a phenomenally good outcome for Porsche. Congratulations to our colleagues from Falken Tire and our works driver Wolf Henzler on this fantastic achievement. On the wet track our drivers got away brilliantly at the start. But then the caution phase came exactly at the wrong time and the more than 50 second advantage that Patrick had worked so hard to build was gone. Under these changeable conditions, strategy played a vital role. Unfortunately we finally had to call Patrick into the pits otherwise he would have exceeded the maximum allowable driving time. If this hadn’t have happened we would have locked out the top three places.”
Wolf Henzler (Porsche 911 RSR #17): “It’s a great feeling to win Watkins Glen, especially in such crazy weather. Our Falken tyres were really good in the rain and the 911 with its rear engine and fantastic traction is made for such conditions. We waived our last pit stop and tried to conserve our fuel as good as we could. It worked. We were convinced that we could do it even without the final safety car phase. But when the safety car was deployed it was still a huge relief. In that moment I knew nothing more could happen.”
Bryan Sellers (Porsche 911 RSR #17): “In the end it was simply a matter of keeping cool: Is there enough fuel or not? We did what we could. We were fast in both dry and wet conditions. Under such conditions you need a little luck of course, but I think all in all it was a well-earned victory. To achieve this result the entire team has worked very hard over the last weeks and months. Today we reaped the rewards.”
Earl Bamber (Porsche 911 RSR #912): “Second place feels really good. At the end of a very eventful day it’s a great achievement for the Porsche North America squad, particularly after such a difficult beginning. At the end we could have done with a couple of extra race minutes under green. Perhaps then we could have even won. It’s a shame, but still, congratulations to the Falken Team.”
Jörg Bergmeister (Porsche 911 RSR #912): “That was a very exciting race for us. We experienced a couple of problems, for instance with the contact in the first lap and the damaged front splitter, but we also had difficulty getting the wheel off to change it. But when things got serious in the final phase we made the right strategic decisions and brought home second place. We can be very happy with this result”.
Patrick Pilet (Porsche 911 RSR #911): “I got off the line well at the start in the rain. To take the lead in the very first lap is not a bad start at all. It was very tricky in the rain, sometimes you just had to concentrate on keeping the car on the track. But I love such conditions. I’ve driven in this sort of weather on the Nürburgring-Nordschleife and this experience certainly stood me in good stead today. It’s a shame that it ultimately wasn’t enough for a place on the podium.”
Nick Tandy (Porsche 911 RSR #911): “What a crazy race. We did our best and certainly had the potential under these changeable conditions to finish at the front. Unfortunately at the end we no longer had the chance to fight for victory.”
Round six of the Tudor United SportsCar Championship will be contested on 12 July in the Canadian Tire Motorsport Park at Bowmanville/Canada.


Race result
GTLM class
1. Henzler/Sellers (D/USA), Porsche 911 RSR, 157 laps
2. Bamber/Bergmeister (NZ/D), Porsche 911 RSR, 157
3. Auberlen/Werner (USA/D), BMW Z4 GTE, 157
4. Magnussen/Garcia (DK/E), Chevrolet Corvette, 157
5. Kaffer/Fisichella (D/I), Ferrari F458 Italia, 157
6. Pilet/Tandy (F/GB), Porsche 911 RSR, 157
7. Gavin/Milner (GB/USA), Chevrolet Corvette, 136

GTD class
1. Carter/Lawrence/Goosens (USA/USA/B), Dodge Viper SRT, 152 laps
2. Potter/Lally/Seefried (USA/USA/D), Porsche 911 GT America, 152
3. Haase/von Moltke/Miller (D/USA/USA), Audi R8 LMS, 152
4. Sweedler/Bell (USA/USA), Ferrari 458 Italia, 152
5. McNeil/Keen/Davis (USA/USA/USA), Porsche GT America, 152
6. Keating/Bleekemolen (USA/NL), Dodge Viper SRT, 152
7. Farnbacher/James (D/USA), Porsche 911 GT America, 152

This is the Tudor United SportsCar Championship
The Tudor United SportsCar Championship is a new sports car race series contested in the USA and Canada which was run in 2014 for the first time. The series was formed from the merger of the American Le Mans Series and the Grand-Am Series. Sports prototypes and sports cars start in four different classes: GTLM (GT Le Mans), GTD (GT Daytona), P (Prototype) and PC (Prototype Challenge). The Porsche 911 RSR runs in the GTLM class, with the Porsche 911 GT America contesting the GTD class.



All reports on the previous season can be found in our archive.