Of the knots seems to have burst finally with the Ford GT driver Dirk Müller and his team of Ford Chip Ganassi Racing. With the victory of Ryan Briscoe and Richard Westbrook in the sister’s car and the strong sixth position of Dirk Müller and Joey Hand, the Ford team celebrated the first victory of the new Ford GT at the fourth round of the IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship in Laguna Seca.
Till shortly before the end of the 120 minutes race on the track with the famous “Corkscrew” corner, everything looked good for the first victory for Dirk Müller and his team mate Joey Hand. A short additional splash and dash before the end of the race cost, the until there leading Ford GT drivers, the victory.
In the qualifying on the 3.6 kilometre long mountain and valley road in Monterey was already early clear that the Ford Chip Ganassi Racing drivers will have the strength to fight for the victory. Dirk Müller qualified his #66 Ford GT behind his teammate Ryan Briscoe close behind on position three. The Swiss living had a very good start and together with the #67 and a Ferrari they could increase the gap to the rest oft he field easily. Quickly it turned out that the fourth round would become to a consumption race. The Ford team took the chance to change driver to Joey Hand, fuel and tires at the 45 minutes mark during a full course yellow situation in order to react on the competition in third position. The American could overtake the teammates immediately in the box and passed the other car for the lead shortly afterwards. However, due to the early stop Joey came out of the optimum consumption window. 15 minutes before the checked flag Joey Hand had to pit for a short splash and dash in the Ganassi pits and with that they lost the leading position and finished finally sixth. Their teammates Ryan Briscoe and Richard Westbrook were able to safe more fuel and they brought the first victory for the team Ford Chip Ganassi Racing home.
„This was a super great weekend for us and I am very proud and happy that we had such a fantastic race. I congratulate Ryan and Richard for the first victory of the new Ford GT. Unfortunately, our stop was necessary there, otherwise, we would not have seen the finish line. Then later in traffic Joey has lost some more time, when his tires were over a stint old and he had nothing to fight with. But I am tremendously glad for our fantastic guys and the whole team of Ford Chip Ganassi Racing. (www. byjogi. de)
