Empringham Finishes Second, Keeps Grand-Am Series Lead
August 22 - Grand Sport (GS) points leader David Empringham briefly held the race lead during Sunday’s Grand-Am Cup 200 at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, but surrendered the position when his pit stop turn came up.
It was a challenging day for the No. 05 Multimatic Motorsports Ford Mustang GT, which crossed the stripe 31.3 seconds to the stern of Justin Marks and Bill Auberlen, who drove their BMW M3 to a fourth victory of the season.
It was an eventful stint for Scott Maxwell, who rejoined the race in 17th place after taking over the Mustang from Empringham on Lap 39. Maxwell broke back into the top 10 after just eight laps and moved into fifth place on Lap 61. The Canadian methodically picked off positions as the laps wound down, settling into second place with just three laps remaining.
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“It was a tough one for us,” Maxwell said. “We lost out on fuel mileage and ended up 17th after the caution, so it was hard work. The Ford Mustang was strong. The brakes worked well, the engine worked well, and we’ll take the points. We were pushing hard, but (the No. 96 car) was a long way up the road when we came across, so we’ve still got some work to do.”
Empringham continues to win the season-long war as he and Maxwell took their series-leading sixth podium result of the season. While Marks and Auberlen were able to gain a few points with their victory, Empringham holds a healthy 22-point advantage over Marks (262-242) with just two races remaining on the 2005 Grand Am Cup Schedule.
“We couldn’t be happier,” Empringham said. “We could see we didn’t have the car for Justin and Bill, and because of our fuel economy issues, we had to wait for the yellow a longer amount of time in order to be able to make it to the end of the race for our driver change. Scott came out at 17th and we had a long way to go. He had a really good run, so we couldn’t be happier with second place.”
The Grand-Am Cup Series will now head west to Phoenix International Raceway for the Phoenix Twin 200s in two weeks time. Television coverage of today’s Grand-Am Cup 200 from Mid-Ohio will air on SPEED Channel beginning at 12:00 Noon ET on Saturday, September 17.
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