WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. (JUNE 26, 2022) – With a bold move, little fuel and a broken car, Filipe Albuquerque turned a weather delay into victory.
He took the lead with a daring pass late in the race, then swerved through traffic with a damaged car while saving fuel to win the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen on Sunday at Watkins Glen International.
“It was really crazy,” Albuquerque said. “When you believe in it, you just keep your foot down.”
After a lengthy red flag for severe weather, the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race restarted with 21 minutes on the clock and Albuquerque second behind Tom Blomqvist, who had teamed with Oliver Jarvis in the No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian Acura ARX-05 to lead most of the endurance race.
After the restart, Albuquerque in the No. 10 Konica Minolta Acura chased Blomqvist through the first four turns before pulling alongside heading into the inner loop. The two cars made contact, Albuquerque pulled ahead, and then somehow managed to hold off Blomqvist’s tenacious challenge to the finish.
The drama didn’t end there. Shortly after he passed Blomqvist, Albuquerque made contact with a Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) car, knocking the left mirror askew on the No. 10 car. In spite of that and the low fuel, he made it work.
“The mirror was gone, the car was bent,” Albuquerque said. “I just put full throttle to try to get it to the (inner loop). I was like, ‘This is going to be funny now.’ The car was going sideways. It was really weird. And then (strategist) Brian (Pillar) was saying, ‘You need to save fuel.’ I had bigger problems than this. I didn’t know if I could finish the race.”
The last-minute victory had a dramatic effect on the standings in the Daytona Prototype international (DPi) class. Albuquerque and co-driver Ricky Taylor came into the race trailing Blomqvist and Jarvis by 13 points.
With the victory, Albuquerque and Taylor regained the championship lead, taking a 17-point advantage into next Sunday’s Chevrolet Grand Prix at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in Bowmanville, Ontario.
“It’s not a lot at all,” Taylor said. “You could make up that difference with qualifying alone. It’s very tight. The nice thing that we’re going to take out of it is that we continue to build a gap to Cadillac. At the end of the day, we really want to bring a championship for Acura.”
Two Cadillac Racing entries finished close behind the two Acuras – Sebastien Bourdais in the No. 01 he co-drove with Renger van der Zande, and Alex Lynn in the No. 02 he shared with Earl Bamber. The No. 02 dropped to 160 points behind the No. 10 in the standings, with the No. 01 185 points out of the lead.
Sunday’s race was also the third of four in the IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup. Blomqvist, Jarvis and the No. 60 Acura hold a one-point lead over Albuquerque, Taylor and the No. 10 Acura in that contest.
After next week’s race, just two races remain for the DPi class – the IMSA SportsCar Weekend at Road America on Aug. 7 and the Motul Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta on Oct. 1.