IWSC: Watkins Glen 6H
The Michelin Endurance Cup’s third round takes place at the historic Watkins Glen International Raceway in Upstate New York. A town steeped in racing tradition from the early days of sportscar racing to hosting the United States Grand Prix, it now plays host to the 6 Hours of Watkins Glen one of the crown jewel endurance races in the world. MLT Motorsports took on their first IMSA Endurance round with familiar faces featuring Josh Sarchet, Dakota Dickerson, and promoted up from the Prototype Challenge program; Tyler Maxson.
The weekend started off on the right foot being classified in the Top 3 of each practice session. Josh Sarchet carried that speed into Qualifying. He again challenged for pole putting himself five tenths ahead of the next Bronze driver, this placed the team second on the grid as the pole sitting car opted to use one of their Silver rated drivers under 30 to qualify and snagged pole.
The six-hour endurance classic is just long enough that strategy comes into play but the race is run at an intense sprint pace. Throughout the first two stints Sarchet showed the team’s speed and led 10 laps before pitting to hand the car over to Tyler Maxson. Tyler picked up right where Josh left off running fast times and fighting to keep the team on a strategy that threatened for the win.
Everything was running to plan until Maxson reported a loss of drive exiting the Toe of the Boot, with technical help from the pit wall he was able to continue. Although, at this point the team did not have a full diagnosis of what was ailing the car. With how tight the battle was on track the team kept him on track until the car lost drive again. This time Maxson managed to limp the car back to pit lane where the team unfortunately found gearbox fluid where it wasn’t supposed to be. 108 laps, three hours and forty-five minutes into the six-hour race the team had retire the car as the gearbox was not capable of continuing.
Despite the disappointing result the team showed the paddock that MLT is a team that will challenge for wins. The official results place the team seventh out of the eleven LMP3s.