Fourteen GTS3 cars took the green flag for the Eastern States Championships. Aaron Turek led the field from pole position, followed by Foad Razavi and Frank Ferrara in third.
By lap three, Turek had established a sizeable lead over Ferrara, who had overtaken Razavi for second place. Turek held the lead till the double-yellow came out on lap six and that kept the field in place for several laps while crews cleaned up the track.
When the race resumed, there wasn’t much time left on the clock and Turek still had the lead, followed by Ferrara in second and Dino Kouretas in third. Then, on the penultimate lap, Turek was no longer in the lead and had dropped out. That put Lindackers into P1, with Kouretas in second and Ferrara in third, which was the way it finished.
Unfortunately for Kouretas, he was DQ’d after the race, which shifted the order and put Ferrara in second. Third went to Andrew Morton, who had come all the way from Northern California to compete at Watkins Glen. After the race, Lindackers was all smiles.
“It was an unbelievable run,” Lindackers said. “We had some bad luck in the first qualifying race. I missed a double yellow, and got DQ’d, so pretty much I thought the weekend was over. We had to start from the back today, and it was an unreal run.”
Ferrara thought he finished in third, where he started, but the DQ moved him up to second.
“Aaron Turek and I were fighting for the lead and Foad was right there,” Ferrara said. “We were together for the whole race and pretty much the guys from behind were catching up, and we had some incidents and had a restart. On the restart, it was kind of just picking your line and seeing what worked and these guys behind got a great run and came up on the back straight leading into the Bus Stop and they made it stick. I tried to catch them at the end, but I couldn’t quite get them, but it was a great race. These guys did a great job.”
