The plaid Porsche—entered by Canadian team Pfaff—is gaining steam in IMSA’s GTD Pro class with yet another victory this weekend at the GT-only round in Connecticut. The team’s good fortune began during qualifying when driver Matt Campbell completely shattered the qualifying record for GTD cars with a 51.079 second lap to put the number nine 911 GT3 R on pole position for Saturday’s race. With stiff competition from Aston Martin, BMW, Corvette, and Lexus, it was the single Porsche in the field ready to take on all comers at the start of the race. Campbell continued his good run with a great get away from the green flag.
During the first round of pit stops the Porsche lost the lead to the superior work of the Lexus pit crew, but Campbell had the pace to make it back up on track, sliding back through to the lead just past the halfway point of the race. Once he was back to the point he never looked back. Handing off to teammate Mathieu Jaminet at the second pit stop, Jaminet then held on to the lead until the checkered flag, despite a late race caution period that bunched up the field and destroyed the Porsche’s lead gap. Jaminet completely aced the restart and blazed off into the distance, re-building a nearly two second gap over second by the time the final lap was finished.
This round was much simpler for the GT cars, as it was a GT-only round with the faster prototype cars sitting this one out. It was nice to see the GTD Pro cars get the bulk of the coverage for this race, as they are really exciting to see both on-track and in terms of strategy. There isn’t really much to say about this race from a Porsche perspective, because everything fell Pfaff’s way and they never really had anything but a smooth run.
Let’s hear from the team:
Matt Campbell: “Fantastic result. Another win and perfect for our championship. We have extended that lead which is really, really good. It wasn’t easy but a key part of our race was leading from the front. I couldn’t be happier.”
Mathieu Jaminet: “The teamwork has been amazing. I am impressed in how the team has worked again today with strategy. We saw that everybody pitted early. This would have put pressure on us because we were the leader, and we would have been undercut. We just stuck to our plan, our strategy. Everyone stayed calm on the pit wall, and you don’t see this on many teams. This is one of our strengths and it has been like this all year long. The guys in the pits have done a faultless job now for the seventh round in a row. We are not always the quickest but so far maybe we are the ones making the fewest mistakes.”
With the Corvette team able to score no higher than fourth in GTD Pro, the Pfaff car made huge points inroads this weekend and with just three rounds left in the season it’s looking quite good for the season championship. This victory at Lime Rock Park marks the plaid team’s fourth victory and third from the last four rounds, setting them up with 2441 points compared to Corvette’s 2226.