Acura Motorsports Race Report
Sunday, September 13, 2015
Grand Prix of Monterey
Circuit: Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca (2.238-mile road course) Monterey, California
Weather: Partly Cloudy, warm, 70 degrees F
RealTime Racing Acura TLX GTs Score Double Top-10s in Season Finale
• RealTime Racing Acura TLX GT finished in top 10 in 16 of year’s 20 races
• Ryan Eversley climbs to sixth in the final points standings
• Peter Cunningham closes 2015 season with season-high sixth-place finish
MONTEREY, Calif.- (Sept. 13, 2015) – RealTime Racing closed the 2015 Pirelli World Challenge in strong fashion Sunday at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca as team owner/driver Peter Cunningham finished a season-best sixth in leading a double top-10 finish for the team’s Acura TLX GTs.
Cunningham started ninth and ran a solid race throughout 35 laps of the tricky Laguna Seca layout. He slipped back a spot early in the race, but fought back to make up four positions, taking sixth after fighting off a charge from Olivier Beretta with less than five minutes left in the race.
“The race was a lot of fun. I had some good spars with Kevin Estre in the McLaren and JD Davison in the Nissan. It was a constant battle, back and forth, pass and re-pass,” Cunningham said. “It was a fun scrap and we both made it to the end in one piece. This is my best finish of the year so I’m pretty happy with that.”
Ryan Eversley started 11th and ended his day in 10th, moving him ahead of Mike Skeen and into sixth place in the standings in his first full-time season in the PWC GT series. Eversley soldiered on through a tough afternoon that saw him battle brake trouble, but put himself in position to benefit from some late-race mistakes by competitors to snare a 10th-place finish.
“The biggest problem was that I lost something in the brakes,” Eversley said. “It was a frustrating way to race, because I honestly could not stop the car very well. There were a lot of times when I went off the road in Turn Two trying not to run into Kevin Estre, or even Peter for that matter.”
The finish marked the second time this season that both Acura TLXs finished in the top 10, matching the results earned when Eversley finished sixth and Cunningham scored a ninth-place run in Long Beach. The effort scored some valuable manufacturer points for the Acura squad as well, allowing the team to finish eighth in the manufacturer standings.
“This was one of our better finishes in awhile,” said Senior Program Engineer Lee Niffenegger. “Obviously, we had a couple of guest drivers for the finale (Alessandro Balzan and Alessandro PierGuidi who finished 1-2 in their Ferrari 458s) that normally aren’t here and maybe showed how strong that car [the Ferrari] was. It was Peter’s best finish of the year, so overall having two cars in the top 10 is a good result.
The team will rest for approximately 36 hours and then get back to work preparing for the 2016 season, as they will test Tuesday at Laguna Seca.
“Tonight and tomorrow is the offseason,” Cunningham reported. “But starting Tuesday, preparations for 2016 commence and the RealTime guys are still hungry.”