Tom Blomqvist and his Meyer Shank Racing team secured a sixth-place finish in a perseverant performance during round four of the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca this weekend.
The early signs were positive as a second-row start was secured during Saturday's qualifying session, with Tom's teammate, Colin Braun, rewarding the #60 car a P3 starting position for Sunday's race.
Braun was in the driver's seat at the start of the race and soon took the #60 Acura ARX-06 into the lead of the race with a fantastic move down the inside heading into turn 1, passing both the front-row cars.
Just 18 minutes into the race, Braun had built up a four-second lead at the front but a caution gave the teams the opportunity to pit with the #60 team opting to put on four new tires. However, the stop wasn't perfect, with the team resuming the race in P5.
Another caution with one hour and fifty minutes of the race remaining saw another wave of pitstops. The #60 team elected for a quick refuel to resume the race as quickly as possible, which placed the Acura ARX-06 back in the lead of the race.
Braun battled bravely to maintain the advantage before tyre wear began to significantly impact the performance of the car.
With an hour remaining, a driver change took place as Tom Blomqvist took over with the car running eighth in the GTP running order.
As the time ticked by and the race edged closer to a conclusion, Tom fought his way through multi-class traffic, showcasing his skills to improve his position by a couple of places before bringing the car home in P6.
Tom and his teammate Colin Braun currently sit 8th in the Drivers' Championship with 1023 points. IMSA will now take a six-week break before the Sahlen's Six Hours of Watkins Glen on Sunday, June 26.
“The race started off well. Colin had a fantastic start and it was looking pretty good. The way the yellows fell and our first stop wasn’t the best, so we were at the back. Track position around here is key and it’s so hard to make your way forward. We tried something on another stop that I think ultimately ended up hurting us more than not. We basically fell off the cliff on the tire deg. We didn’t capitalize perfectly today. We’ll have to look and see what the root cause was. It's a shame because it looked like we were going to have a great race.”
- Tom Blomqvist
In association with MBP
