Ryan Yardley has endured a tough weekend in GT4 America after an issue in the first race and a mid-pack result in the second, but was able to bring home seventh in class in GT World to stay in the Pro-Am championship fight.
GT4 America
Race 1
In GT4 America, Yardley and Hot qualified seventh in class for Race 1, and sixth in class for Race 2. Hot started the race in Race 1, and quickly moved up to fifth in class and fifteenth overall in the opening minutes.
The Canadian soon moved down to sixteen, but was able to stay close to the driver ahead and was showing good levels of pace.
However, Hot had moved down to seventeenth as the first full course yellow came out with fourty-seven minutes remaining. The race resumed after ten minutes, as Hot started to pressure Perichon ahead.
It all came unravelled for the duo with thirty-seven minutes to go as Hot found himself beached in the wall. This threw the team down the order, as Hot slowly crawled back to pit-lane.
This essentially ended the race for the team. They finished two laps down in thirteenth in class, and twenty-sixth overall.
Race 2
Yardley started as the elected driver in the car, and had fallen to twelfth off the start. He sat six seconds off the leader, but soon moved up to eleventh overall and started to pressure tenth in class.
As the race progressed, Yardley started to get into battled with those around him. He had fallen to thirteenth with thirty-eight minutes remaining in a caution free race so far.
As strategies came into play, the Kiwi extended his stint out and climbed as high as ninth before he came into the lane. The car was handed over to Hot, who rejoined in fifteenth.
The first full course yellow was brought out for a stranded car with twenty-minutes to go, which closed the field back up. Hot had fallen to eighteenth by this stage, where he remained until the chequered flag, ending off a tricky weekend for Yardley
GT World
A combined qualifying session left Yardley and Musial Jr in seventh in class and eleventh overall, with Musial Jr starting the race. Over his first stint, the American was able to hold position well and had moved up a spot after ten minutes, but sat ten seconds behind ninth.
The team’s first pitstop came just over fifteen minutes in, with Musial Jr staying in the car, and rejoined the race in sixteenth.
Musial Jr managed to climb back up to thirteenth position at the time the first full course yellow was called, after the #99 of Derek DeBoer found himself beached in the gravel.
The race resumed soon after but found itself back under yellow by the two hour mark as Jay Scheirbman’s Ferrari also became stranded in the gravel. This brought Musial Jr in for another pitstop while remaining in the car to finish off his stint.
With an hour fourty left in the race, Yardley got the opportunity to jump in the car.
Yardley found himself with a sizeable gap in front and behind during the opening laps of his stint. The Kiwi sat in ninth in class and thirteenth overall with just over an hour remaining, and started to bring the gap down to the Pro-Am car of Hartog ahead.
Hartog was forced to retire after an incident with an Aston Martin on track. No caution was called, leaving Yardley twenty-one seconds behind the car ahead and seven seconds ahead of Colin Braun.
This gap left Yardley in no-mans land as the minutes ticked down. Another driver retired in the last twenty-minutes, which left Yardley in eleventh overall in the last ten minutes.
Yardley was able to keep it controlled to finish seventh in class, and eleventh overall. Yardley now also sits third in the Pro-Am championship, six points behind Tom Sargent and Kyle Washington.
The GT World and GT4 America season will conclude in Indianapolis at the Indianapolis Road Course, starting on October 9th.
