Jones Relinquishes Victory when Car Found Out of Compliance
By Mark Robinson
BOWMANVILLE, Ontario – Steven Aghakhani broke back into the IMSA VP Racing SportsCar Challenge win column in an unusual way, but he’ll gladly take it.
Aghakhani, the Le Mans Prototype 3 (P3) points leader, crossed the finish line second Saturday in the No. 6 MLT Motorsports Ligier JS P320 to Jagger Jones, driver of the No. 87 FastMD Racing with Remstar Duqueine D08. In postrace technical inspection, however, Jones’ car was found to have camber in excess of the permitted maximum and moved to the rear of the eight-car P3 class in the provisional race results.
The revision handed Aghakhani his third win of the season and first since he swept the season-opening doubleheader at Daytona International Speedway in January. Jones saw his bid for a fifth straight victory negated by the infraction.
“It wasn’t exactly how we wanted to get a win, but nonetheless a win is still a win in the end,” Aghakhani said. “We’ll absolutely take it and we’ve extended our points lead by a comfortable margin. Our race pace was there (Saturday); we were keeping it safe, looking forward to the entire season.”
Aghakhani takes a provisional 440-point championship lead into Sunday’s 45-minute race. With such a sizable advantage, he hinted that he may let the reins loosen on the No. 6 Ligier.
“We might show off a little bit more aggression,” he said. “We definitely did show it in qualifying, putting the car out on pole. But again, the biggest thing is bringing the car back home safe. The last thing we want is a DNF for the points gap to close.”
Jonathan Woolridge, a Canadian who won at CTMP last year, finished second in the revised order in the No. 38 Performance Tech Motorsports Ligier, with Performance Tech teammate Alex Kirby third in the No. 7 Ligier.
Canadian Polito Wins on Home Turf in GSX Debut
Jack Polito turned his VP Racing Challenge debut into an even more memorable day at his home track. The Lindsay, Ontario, resident drove the No. 98 Polito Racing Ford Mustang GT4 to the Grand Sport X (GSX) class victory by holding off GSX points leader Luca Mars.
Polito started second in class and was still running there when GSX polesitter Jesse Lazare (No. 21 Motorsports In Action McLaren Artura GT4) stopped on track with 20 minutes left in the 45-minute sprint. With Mars (No. 59 KohR Motorsports Ford) breathing down his neck on the ensuing restart, Polito held firm and was still in first place when the second caution flag waved for a single-car crash involving Eddie Killeen (No. 37 Thaze Competition Mercedes-AMG GT GT4). Polito and Mars gave Ford a 1-2 finish under yellow.
“It feels pretty good, pretty fantastic!” Polito said. “I’ve been pounding laps here since I was 15 years old and I’ve just been grinding, working out, training for this. I’ve just been envisioning it, manifesting it, and it came true. I’m pretty happy.”
Polito captured the 2023 FEL Motorsports Sports Car Championship Canada GT4 class title in a Mustang, winning nine of 12 races. He used that experience to springboard his VP Racing Challenge coming-out party this weekend.
“Last year I got to compete in the FEL series and we ended up taking the championship,” Polito said. “Then we decided to do an IMSA race this year and it went so far awesome. It feels pretty good to represent Ford, couldn’t be happier. Wouldn’t want to choose any other brand, that’s for sure.”
The second race of the VP Racing Challenge weekend starts at 3:35 p.m. ET today, with a livestream available on Peacock and IMSA.tv.