The Wayne Taylor Racing team of brothers Ricky and Jordan Taylor, along with Max Angelelli, came out on top of a battle between Corvette Daytona Prototypes to win the 17th annual Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta on Saturday. The Taylor brothers joined their father Wayne Taylor as Petit winners, as the elder Taylor was one of the winning drivers in the inaugural Petit Le Mans in 1998.
The No. 10 Taylor team battled the No. 5 Corvette team of Joao Barbosa, Christian Fittipaldi and Sebastien Bourdais throughout the 10-hour endurance run over Road Atlanta’s winding 12-turn, 2.54-mile course.
With about an hour and a half to go, Fittipaldi took the lead from Ricky Taylor. But nine minutes later, after a driver change, Jordan Taylor drove past Fittipaldi and gave his team a lead it would not relinquish over the final hour of the race. It was the team’s second victory of the season, the first coming at Belle Isle in Detroit in May.
“It’s a great way to end the year,” Jordan Taylor said. “We’ve won the last race the last few seasons, and it’s a great trend we hope to continue.”
Scott Dixon and co-drivers Memo Rojas and Scott Pruett finished third in Chip Ganassi’s No. 01 Ford EcoBoost Riley, while the futuristic DeltaWing car, which is based in Braselton, had one of its best runs ever.
The narrow-nosed car overcame its reliability problems of the past and led the race for a time and ran in the top five in the Prototype class for much of the race. It finished fourth with Katherine Legge, Gabby Chaves and Andy Meyrick driving.
Fittipaldi clinched the Prototype division driving title midway through the race. He and his team ended the season like they started it at Daytona International Speedway, with a trophy in hand.
“It us an honor to be part of this team, to be driving with Joao (Barbosa) all season,” Fittipaldi said. “It couldn’t have been better.”
Saturday’s race was the 13th and final event in the inaugural season of the TUDOR SportsCar Championship, which was created by a merger of the American Le Mans Series and NASCAR’s Grand Am Series.
The 400-lap race was slowed by an unusually high number of full-course caution periods as the yellow flag flew 13 times, the final one with 12 minutes to go for a wreck by Winston’s Sean Rayhall, who was leading the Prototype Challenge class at the time of his crash. Rayhall was transported from the crash by ambulance, then evaluated and released from the track’s care center, according to track officials.
The No. 8 team of Renger Van der Zande won the Prototype Challlenge class, while Wolf Henzler and his No. 17 Porsche team won in GT Le Mans.
Christopher Haase and his No. 48 Audi team won in GT Daytona.
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