Tyler Clarke had never raced at Mid-Ohio Sport Car Course before and was a quick study, getting acquainted with the track to win his first championship. Coming from Seattle, Clarke had only seen the track in videos.
“Gerald Lowe with Lowe Group Racing really does a great job putting our cars together and getting them tuned well for the track,” Clarke said. “Having his racing knowledge in general has been a huge benefit to us and has really helped me to basically learn a track quickly.”
Clarke earned pole for the championship and pushed hard by second-place finisher Eric Magnussen, who had run the tables in ST3 and GTS3 on Friday and Saturday. Clarke finished just 1.668 seconds in front of Magnussen.
“So yesterday in a qualifying race for GTS, I had some contact. I was a little too aggressive on the first lap and I came into contact with the GTS4 car. It was all my fault and I apologized,” Magnussen said. “I spent the first couple of laps just pacing it and letting things work out naturally. And then towards the end really started pushing. I think we got the track record, 1:33.0. But with the early checker, with the accidents, we weren’t able to make it back up to leader.”
Rob Williams started from second on grid and got up into first place before being passed by Clarke and Magnussen, and finished third at Mid-Ohio.
“If I could keep them behind me, I could defend. But they had a little bit more pace than me and so they got through,” Williams said. “And then basically I was hoping to just keep the pace and that their tires would go away at the end, but it didn’t happen. So I’m happy to have third place and these guys had great pace. Just didn’t have quite enough to catch them.”
