Park Place retires early at Watkins Glen 6H

July 01, 2019

Park Place Motorsports retired at the three-hour mark of the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen ahead of the Mobil 1 SportsCar Grand Prix Presented by Acura in IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship action.

The No. 73 de Boulle Porsche 911 GT3 R chased an undiagnosed issue picked up during the morning warmup. What had begun as a small glitch grew to something more over the course of the race. While driver Patrick Lindsey had no complaints in the handling of the car, he was forced to bring the No. 73 Porsche into pitlane to diagnose the issue. While the ultimate reasoning was not deduced the decision to retire was final. Park Place Motorsports ultimately will take home points for a 13 -place finish.

“Unfortunately, we just kind of started off behind this weekend and were always a little bit behind,” Director of Race Operations Mike Johnson said. “I think by the time the warmup came around, we had a really good car. Our drivers were all doing very good lap times, and I think we probably had a good shot making it in the top five, but we found an issue with the motor or electronics in the warm up, and we couldn’t figure out what was the cause. It started so small and whatever it was just getting worse and worse and worse until it became too much.”

Forward thinking was the crew’s immediate reaction. The Park Place Motorsports team will get to work cleaning through the Porsche engine and electrical gear to have it ready for its trip across the northern border into Canada. The mid-season charge continues at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park with the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship resuming sprint race action at the circuit. CTMP is Round 3 of the WeatherTech Sprint Cup; Park Place Motorsports sits second in the team points championship of the sprint championship.

Competition begins on Friday, July 5, with two practice sessions. A final practice session takes place early Saturday, July 6, followed by qualifying, which takes place at 11:35 a.m. ET for the GT Daytona class and can be viewed on IMSA.tv or followed with IMSA Radio. Race day is Sunday, July 7 with the green flag set to drop at 1:05 p.m. for the Mobil 1 SportsCar Grand Prix presented by Acura. The race is broadcast on IMSA.tv and NBC Sports; fans can use IMSA Radio to follow the race live as well.

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