A Sunday packed with battles and promise saw Archangel Motorsports drivers, Alan Brynjolfsson and Trent Hindman drive the No. 7 VOLT Lighting Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 to a fifth place finish at VIRginia International Raceway.
Minimal track time and shortened sessions didn’t play as a problem for Archangel Motorsports as speed found in practice translated into a career-best seventh place qualifying position for Brynjolfsson.
An exceptional start saw the reigning Porsche Cup winner advance to fifth in the first corner. Despite heavy pressure from behind, Brynjolfsson held onto that position for majority of his stint, before falling back to ninth.
As Hindman took over the controls at the 40-minute mark, a full course caution was deployed. Fortunately, swift pit work and pitting before the yellow allowed the 24-year old to cycle into third, where the battles would ensue.
With a stack of GS cars in his mirrors, Hindman locked his rear bumper on the Mercedes of Murry in pursuit of second place. Eight laps and a yellow flag later, he made pass and eventually inherited the lead.
40-minutes remained when Hindman took a scheduled stop for left side tires and fuel. After loosing time to several competitors who opted against tires, he settled into fifth position, where he ultimately saw the checkered flag.
The top five result advances the No. 7 Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 to seventh place in the championship hunt. The IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge will return to action September 5-6 for a 4-hour event at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.
Comments:
Mike Johnson | Principal, Archangel Motorsports
“At the end of the day everyone is really pleased with the result. Alan was really happy with his qualifying time, another top five is good and it’s encouraging to be slowly moving up. This championship is super competitive this year. You have a different winner every time. We’re consistently in the top five, but if we want to make a leg up in the championship we have to start beating the people in front of us. We’re just not quite there yet.”
Alan Brynjolfsson | Driver, No. 7 VOLT Lighting Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 Clubsport
“We had another nicely executed weekend and got some good championship points with our third solid finish in a row. It was my personal best qualifying and start holding fifth. The car started to fade as it got hot in the second half of the stint and I dropped back to ninth. We had perfect strategy and pit stops which enabled us to jump to third when Trent started his stint. Trent had another stellar drive and experienced the same thing with the car and we finished fifth. The team really did everything perfect and we finished as high as we could have with the car we had against the field. I have to give a high five to my whole team for a flawless weekend.”
Trent Hindman | Driver, No. 7 VOLT Lighting Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 Clubsport
“With Alan’s seventh place qualifying effort and the speed that we had seen in the car during practice, our hopes for the race were definitely very high. Alan drove a fantastic first stint and Mike’s call to pit right before the first FCY period of the race was killer. My first stint in the car was looking very promising as we were able to stick around and move within the lead pack. Unfortunately after our second and last stop of the race, we lost some speed and fell out of contention for the win. Fifth place is certainly a solid result, but it’s a little bit disappointing since the Alan, Mike, and the Archangel Motorsports guys executed a fantastic race today. These guys deserve a result worthy of their effort, and a victory will come soon enough for this group.”