MILLVILLE, N.J. (May 12, 2012) – The pole-winning teams in both GRAND-AM Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge classes completed clean sweeps in the B+ Heroes 200 presented by BCKSTGR at New Jersey Motorsports Park by going on to take their class victories.
Bret Spaude and Andrew Aquilante overcame two significant pit-road penalties to score their first Grand Sport (GS) victory in the No. 35 Subaru Road Racing Team Subaru WRX-STI, while Corey Fergus and Owen Trinkler converted Fergus’ Street Tuner (ST) pole into a class victory in the No. 197 Cruise America/Thor Motorcoach Honda Civic Si.
Despite Spaude’s pole-winning performance earlier in the day, the No. 35 did not lead the race until just nine laps to go. Aquilante battled all the way back from a stop-and-go penalty for contact in the pit lane right of way and a stop-and-go-plus-30-second penalty for hitting pit equipment to take the lead from Charles Espenlaub on Lap 75 of the 83-lap race. Aquilante then kept the field at bay on a restart with four laps remaining to win by 2.224 seconds over Espenlaub.
“This has been quite the three-year project to get here,” said Spaude of what was also Subaru’s first Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge GS class victory. “We’ve had a lot of trouble and making a Subaru work against the bigger V8 cars has been a challenge, but we’ve finally gotten there.”
Espenlaub and co-driver Charles Putman took second in the No. 48 Safecraft/OMP/Fall-Line Motorsports BMW M3, and the result moved the 2010 GS co-champions into the points lead by eight points, 115-107, over Al Carter and Hugh Plumb, who finished fifth. Third place in GS went to Eric Curran and Lawson Aschenbach in the No. 01 CKS Autosport Chevrolet Camaro GS.R.