It is the top of the hour and we have about an hour and 40 minutes to go in the Rolex 24. Driving to the temperature gauge are what Action Express Racing are doing. Westbrook and Garcia are scrapping in GT Le Mans. Westbrook clears Garcia. The two of them did drive for Troy Flis and his team a number of years ago. The Lamborghini has come to pit lane. We now have an hour and a half left. Acura has done so well in this year's race with Trent Hindman, A.J. Allmendinger, Alvaro Parente, and Katherine Legge. But there's some really problematic stuff with the team's most recent pit stop, especially at this stage of the race. A.J. Allmendinger beat Marcos Ambrose to a win in NASCAR Monster Energy Cup several years ago, and he and Ambrose drove together at the Rolex 24 years ago as well.
IMSA's timing and scoring system has definitely got a glitch in it. So, yours truly is playing catch up some with a post on the last hours of this race. Any person on the team or any piece of equipment, can compromise your race. For Mike Shank Racing, it was a jammed air impact hammer. Folks, we are going to see a distance record in this race despite the inclement weather. Again, yours truly apologizes, but there has been a scoring glitch, and thus, a couple hours have to be chained together here in one post. Joey Hand's crew made the call to pit early. Richard Westbrook will stay on hot tires.
Ford is trying their hardest to win this motor race. Timing and scoring, seems to have crashed. Ford GT in the lane. The #67 car is making a driver change! Ryan Briscoe jumps back into the car to take the car to the finish. Wow. This ought to be something. Joey Hand will have hot tires. What is the gap? Can he close it up? We have about 80 minutes to go now. Joey Hand has to make things happen, now. Can he apply the blowtorch? Both cars will need one stop for fuel. Will we see precipitation in the last hour of this race? The Michelin tires are coming up to pressure and up to temperature.
Find the sweet spot. Ryan Briscoe still has to tiptoe through some of these corners. More GTLM competition ahead. 3.4 seconds is the gap. Hand will close that delta, or at least try his hardest to. Traffic won't play into the final outcome of this Rolex 24. Ryan Briscoe ran fasteast lap for Ford at 1:44.504. Timing and scoring has partially recovered. So, this update is hour 22. Then, we will double up for the final update and you get hours 23 and 24 in one update. An hour and 15 minutes now on the clock.
The Briscoe/Hand battle is hotting up and the gap is closing, fast. There is weather moving west/southwest and it might move in. It might stay to the west. There's still a lot of racing remaining here. Chip Ganassi will let these boys run, and go for his 200th win as a car owner. They began winning, pairing up with Honda and Target, with Jimmy Vasser. The team has had six overall Rolex 24 wins.
Oh boy. Stuart Middleton has run a shade under his base drive time, and he'll have to finish this race as Mike Conway has lately been wheeling it. Ryan Briscoe is beginning to cut some really fast laps. Filipe Albuquerque is only a lap ahead of the #54 car. We have gone past the lap record, and we are shortly coming towards eclipsing the distance record. The hand grenade's pin has been pulled. But, how long before the grenade explodes and the monster is unleashed? Things are beginning to change. The pit strategies are fluctuating between flexibility and what plan was going to be used.
For the #31 Cadillac, Englishman Stuart Middleton did not run a minimum of two hours. Let him run for a lap. He'll have to get in because there's no yellow. If it rains, he has to race in the rain for the first time in his life.
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