Rianna O’Meara-Hunt continues to impress in GT4 America Championship, the talented Kiwi and her driving partner Hannah Grisham finishing 15th in the Am Class at NOLA Motorsports Park.
The result is probably not a fair indication of how the Heart of Racing duo competed over the weekend, with an unfortunate pitlane issue dropping to the back of the field during Sunday’s race.
It was a hectic weekend in New Orleans, with a massive downpour resulting in the cancellation of Saturday’s race, meaning Sunday’s Race 2 instead used Race 1’s qualifying results.
O’Meara-Hunt had put in a massive performance in that qualifying session, putting their #26 Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT4 fourth in class on the grid, in 16th of 42 overall.
The Kiwi converted her strong qualifying performance into pure race pace, driving forward to be second of the Am competitors before stopping to hand over to Grisham to bring the car home.
That stop was where things went wrong, with Grisham returning to the back of the field before a late charge saw her drive back to 14th of the 20 Am teams, in 32nd overall.
It’s evident the pace is there for O’Meara-Hunt and Grisham, with a strong result likely to come off the back of a complete performance.
The battle for overall honours was an extremely tight affair, just .004 seconds separating Auto Technic Racing and the Conquest Racing/JMF Motorsport entry, the podium spread sitting at less than a second with Copeland Motorsports just .944 seconds back in third.
Heart of Racing’s Pro-Am entry, of Gray Newell and Roman DeAngelis, finished as Pro-Am class winners.
Saturday’s cancelled race will be re-run as an additional race at a future event.
GT4 America next returns from May 19-21 at Circuit of the Americas.
Header Image: The Heart of Racing
