Stevenson Motorsports Delivers Best Team Finish of the Year at Lime Rock Park with Double Top-Five Result

Lakeville, Conn. (23 July 2016) – It was a brutally hot day at Lime Rock Park on Saturday, but Stevenson Motorsports endured the challenging elements to deliver a double top-five result in Round 7 of the 2016 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. The No. 6 Audi R8 LMS of Andrew Davis and Robin Liddell led the Stevenson charge with the duo’s second consecutive runner-up finish. Matt Bell and Lawson Aschenbach took their best finish of the season with a fifth place result at the checkered flag.

The 2 hour, 40 minute race saw 36 minutes of caution – all of which came in the first half of the race. The team utilized a full course yellow period 30 minutes into the event to pit both cars for tires and fuel. The No. 6 took four tires, while the No. 9 took just left side tires.

The twin Stevenson Audi machines raced their way back up into the top-three and Davis took over the race lead prior to the team’s final pit stops. A full course caution came with just over an hour remaining in the race and both cars pitted for full service pit stops.

When the race went back to green, the race ran at a furious pace and despite the lack of late-race cautions, the GTD field stayed right in a line with lots of swapping of position among the front runners while also minding the traffic of the faster prototype and GTLM classes.

With laps that are less than one minute long at the quick 1.5-mile circuit, and with the heavy traffic of three classes racing at the same time through the tight confines of the bullring track, Stevenson Motorsports knew that pit timing was going to be critical. Unfortunately, while the planning was great, the luck wasn’t, as that final full course caution kept the team from maximizing on the track position that their race pace had earned them.

“The yellow that came with an hour and 10 minutes to go was our back breaker,” said Team Manager Mike Johnson. “If it had come 10 minutes later, we probably would have won the race. Everybody else would have had to make two stops and we would have only had to make one. There was a moment there toward the end where I thought Robin (Liddell) had one shot (at passing the leader) and was gaining on him, but if you watched the No. 44 (race winner) it was just glued everywhere. He could pass high, low, anywhere. Some of that is their car, but the other part is that they have a great driver. Andy (Lally, former Stevenson team driver) knows how to drive around here. I’m happy with this result, it’s great to have two cars in the top-five. The pit stops were a little bit better, we’re still losing time a bit on fuel. But everything played out the way we needed it to today. It is what it is, and we’re really pleased with everything and we’ll move on to the next one.”

In the end, Liddell took over second place in the final laps and hung on to deliver another podium finish for Stevenson Motorsports, while Aschenbach moved up from seventh in line to finish fifth.