ELKHART LAKE, WI (August 5, 2018) – The longer the wait, the sweeter the triumph. Wright Motorsports proved just that after Patrick Long and Christina Nielsen drove the No. 58 Porsche Consulting / Porsche Digital Porsche 911 GT3 R to a breakthrough win at Road America. This marks the Batavia, Ohio-based squad’s first win in GTD competition and Porsche’s 22nd in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
The John Wright-led team picked up exactly where they left things at Lime Rock Park after Long drove the No. 58 Porsche to the pole position in Saturday afternoon’s qualifying session. A brilliant start by the Californian boosted the group’s momentum that much more, allowing the Porsche to maintain the lead during the opening laps of the race.
After 45-minutes, Long pitted to hand the reins over to Nielsen, where she broke back into the field in third place. From there the Dane began throwing down flying laps, running consistently quicker than the two cars in front of her.
With an hour left on the clock, Nielsen dove back into the pits for another full service stop, just moments before a full course caution was called. At this point, the No. 58 Porsche, along with the No. 48 Lamborghini of Bryan Sellers, were the only ones who made it into the pits before they closed.
When Long reentered the race, the green flag came back out, allowing the rest of the field to pit and the Porsche factory driver to advance to second place. From there, it was game on.
After just two heated laps, a flawless move into Turn 1 sent Long around Sellers and back into the GTD lead. From there, Long continued to control the field, stretching his margin to 3.6-seconds, before taking the checkered flag and earning the GTD-class win for Wright Motorsports.
After brushing off the dust on a trying start to the season, Wright Motorsports’ momentum couldn’t be stronger. They look forward to rejoining the IMSA WeatherTech Championship for Round 9 at VIRginia International Raceway August 16-19.
Driver Comments:
Patrick Long | Driver, No. 58 Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R -“We’ve waited a long time for this, so it definitely makes it sweeter. Coming off of a disappointing run two weeks ago, we all banded together as a team to make this happen. The focus and motivation in the atmosphere was the highest it’s been all season and that says a lot about the organization. The race itself had a lot more yellows than we expected, which that always makes you nervous because you’re thinking about how the strategy should be. Fortunately, everyone just kept their cool and hit their marks. The car was phenomenal. I honestly don’t remember having a car that had that perfect of a balance in a long, long time, so I have to give credit to the whole organization on the setup and speed. We’ll try to carry this to VIR.”
Christina Nielsen | Driver, No. 58 Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R – “We’ve been waiting for this for a long time and everything finally came together this weekend. A race track is a living creature; everything changes with different conditions and different weather. You may have information from the year before, but you can never guarantee that it’s going to be that good. This was a testament to the team and how well they did. Patrick did a great job putting it on pole, the car was amazing to drive, the strategy, the pitstops- everything was perfect. The fact that our first podium ended up being a victory was just, perfection.”
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About Wright Motorsports
Wright Motorsports is the premier Porsche race engineering facility in Ohio and a multi-series, international racing team known for superb car preparation, expert race strategy and driver development. Located in Batavia, Ohio near Cincinnati, it is owned and directed by John Wright, a certified Porsche factory-trained technician. As a crew chief John Wright has played a key role in winning eight driver and seven team championships in World Challenge, IMSA (ALMS) and the Grand-Am Rolex Series. Wright Motorsports won the team championship in Porsche GT3 Cup USA in 2012, 2013 and 2015. After a most successful 2017 season, the team holds the Pirelli World Challenge Overall, Sprint, Team and Manufacturer’s titles. For more information see wrightmotorsports.com and follow the team on Twitter and Facebook.
About Porsche Consulting
The Porsche Consulting management consultancy was founded in 1994 in response to the successful restructuring of the Porsche sports car maker. Porsche had gained so much experience and knowledge from mastering a major crisis that it decided to make this expertise available to other companies. Four of its employees formed Porsche Consulting’s initial team. Their small office in Zuffenhausen became a worldwide consultancy—with sites in Stuttgart, Hamburg, Munich, Milan, São Paulo, Atlanta, and Shanghai. Now with 430 employees, many of whom are engineers and economists, Porsche Consulting continues to apply proven solutions from the automotive industry to other sectors. It helps its clients put strategies into practice. Along with its original emphasis on lean transformation, it focuses increasingly on digitalization.
About Porsche Digital
Porsche Digital is the Porsche AG competence center for digitalization. The company defines and implements new value creation strategies and innovative digital product ranges in close cooperation with all Porsche AG departments. Porsche Digital identifies and evaluates trends and invests in start-ups, thus securing access to relevant technologies. It sees itself as an interface between Porsche and innovators all over the world. The company has sites in Ludwigsburg, Berlin, and Santa Clara and further locations such as Asia are planned.