Meet the new bosses, same as the old bosses. Johnny O'Connell secured his third consecutive GT championship with a seventh place finish in today's Pirelli World Challenge season finale while Lawson Aschenbach won his second consecutive GTS championship with a second place finish in the final race of 2014.
Robert Thorne got his first career GT victory after holding off the hard charging Porsche of Ryan Dalziel. The Colorado-native held on for the victory by 0.130 seconds. Thorne's victory is the first for the McLaren MP4-12C GT3 in Pirelli World Challenge and K-PAX Racing's first victory since Alex Figge swept the Mid-Ohio weekend last year. Andy Pilgrim finished third in the season finale ahead of the Dyson Bentleys of Butch Leitzinger and Guy Smith. Smith started on pole for the second consecutive day but fell out of the top ten on the start.
Anthony Lazzaro finished ahead of O'Connell in sixth. Mike Skeen was the top Audi driver in eighth with Andy Lee and Andrew Palmer rounding out the top ten. James Sofronas finished eleventh. The Mercedes-Benz AMG SLS GT3 of Tim Pappas was the top GT-A finisher ahead of Marcelo Hahn and Michael Mills.
Jack Baldwin ended 2014 by scoring his third victory of the season. The victory vaulted him up to second in the final GTS championship standings. Aschenbach finished second with Drew Regitz making another late charge to the final podium position in his TRG Aston Martin for the second consecutive day. Michael Cooper and Dean Martin rounded out the top five in GTS. Three-time race winner in 2014, Dean Martin finished sixth with yesterday's GTS winner Nick Esayian coming home in seventh.
Kia's day started out promising with Nic Jönsson having a commanding lead with Mark Wilkins drove himself from 17th to 6th and nearly back in contention for the championship. Wilkins however would have to retire with a mechanical failure and out the same lap Jönsson dropped from first to fourth and ultimately lost 10 laps to the GTS leaders. Wilkins dropped to third in the final championship standings Local driver Vesko Kozarov was up front all day in GTS but had a mechanical failure while running second late in the race.
Cadillac and Kia will win the manufactures' championships in GT and GTS respectively.
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