João Barbosa was able to stretch fuel further than anyone else on his way to taking the checkered flag in the third Brickyard Grand Prix. It is Barbosa's and his Action Express Racing co-driver Christian Fittipaldi's first career victories at Indianapolis. Action Express Racing's only other victory in 2014 was the season opener 24 Hours of Daytona. With the victory Barbosa and Fittipaldi retake the Prototype championship lead by two points from the Taylor brothers, Jordan and Ricky who finished fourth.
LMP2 cars dominated Thursday, qualifying 1-2-3 but the DPs owned Friday taking the top four. Ganassi Racing's Ford-Riley driven by Scott Pruett and Sage Karam finished second with the #90 Spirit of Daytona Corvette DP of Richard Westbrook and Michael Valiante rounded out the podium. The pole-sitting #1 HPD ARX-03b of Ryan Dalziel and Scott Sharp finished fifth.
On his prototype challenge debut, Jack Hawksworth made a late pass on his Rocketsports teammate Bruno Junqueira, giving the IndyCar rookie a class win on debut and Chris Cumming his first victory since last year's Petit Le Mans. Hawksworth was substituting for the suspended Alex Tagliani after the Canadian reentered the race track unsafely during practice at Watkins Glen a month ago. Duncan Ende was Junqueira's co-driver in the PC second place finishing car. It is Rocketsports first victory of 2014. PC championship leading CORE Autosport pair of Colin Braun and Jon Bennett finished third in class. CORE Autosport has won four of six PC races in 2014.
Jonathan Bomartio and Kuno Wittmer got Viper their first win of 2014 in the GTLM class and ended Corvette's four race winning streak in the process. Wittmer also won the second Pirelli World Challenge race at Toronto earlier in the week on Sunday. Giancarlo Fisichella and Pierre Kaffer finished second in the #62 Ferrari 458 Italia with the #912 Porsche 911 RSR of Patrick Long and Michael Christensen rounding out the GTLM podium. Winners of the previous four events, Jan Magnussen and Antonio García finished fourth. The Dane and Spaniard retained the GTLM championship lead.
Alessandro Balzan and Jeff Westphal won in the GTD class driving the #63 Scuderia Corse Ferrari 458 GT3. It is their second victory of 2014 after winning at Belle Isle on the final day of May. The #48 Audi R8 LMS of Christopher Haase and Bryce Miller matched their best finish of 2014 by finishing second. The most recent winners in GTD, the #33 Viper GT3 of Jeroen Bleekemolen and Ben Keating finished third after a late pass on class championship leaders Bill Sweedler and Townsend Bell.
The next round for the IMSA United SportsCar Championship takes place at Road America on August 10th. All four classes will be competing.
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