Monday was a Pontiac kind of day here at Lime Rock Park in Northwestern Connecticut.
The GM brand dominated the Grand American Rolex Series’ GT-only Memorial Day weekend event, with Banner Racing’s Paul Edwards and Kelly Collins bringing their Pontiac GXP-R home ahead of the 18-car field in a show that ran green all the way.
Still, for a good part of the 164 laps, it seemed as if the honors would go to the Banner camp’s two “guest” drivers — Jan Magnussen and Ron Fellows — who at one point had a full lap over everyone else on the track.
However, with a little more than two laps to go, and with Edwards closing down, Fellows spun out of the lead after entering Lime Rock’s famed first turn, known as “Big Bend.”
That mistake sealed the victory for Edwards and Collins, who extended their points advantage in the process.
With all the excitement up front, Nick Ham, co-driving with Sylvain Tremblay, brought the duo’s SpeedSource Mazda RX8 home to a well-deserved second place, despite a cockpit cooling-system failure that forced Ham to do two stints with Tremblay having a brief spell behind the wheel in-between.
Crossing the line third in the Stevenson Motorsports GXP-R were Andrew Davis and Robin Liddell, the outside polesitters, who suffered mechanical problems early, but came back strong at the end.
Fellows, meanwhile, returned to the action to finish fourth, while yet another GXP-R, the fastest of all in qualifying, Lawson Aschenbach and Tim Lewis, Jr., rounded out the top five.