- Acura earns double top-10 in Saturday’s opening Pirelli World Challenge race
- Kox’s fifth-place run Saturday is his season-best result
- Eversley comes home eighth on Sunday, fourth consecutive top-10 finish
The RealTime Racing Acura NSX GT3 racers continued their mid-season surge over a picturesque weekend at Road America, with Peter Kox earning his first Pirelli World Challenge top-five GT3 finish while Ryan Eversley extended his streak of top-10 results to four in a row.
Both cars had strong qualifying runs, with Kox gridding seventh for Saturday’s lid-lifter around the 4-mile Road America circuit, while Eversley earned the ninth spot. The two Acuras ran in the top-10 all day, in a tough field, with Kox climbing to fifth and threatening to move even higher in a race that went caution-free for 50 grueling minutes.
“A nice top five for Peter Kox on Saturday, and he was challenging for more the whole race. Ryan was shuffled back due to others incidents, but still scored a top 10,” said NSX GT3 Project Leader Lee Niffenegger of Honda Performance Development. “We saw good speed shown by both cars during the first race, and were set up well for good results on Sunday.”
Eversley started sixth in Sunday’s race while Kox again earned the seventh spot on the grid, but things would not go as well for the Dutch veteran driving the #93 Acura. Former series champion Jon Fogarty spun into Kox while trying to pass Eversley and collected Preston Calvert in a destructive moment that ended the day for Kox after just three laps.
“I feel gutted after today’s race, as I had hoped to build on yesterday’s result,” lamented Kox. “We made minor changes to the Acura NSX that should have made us maybe even a bit more competitive today. The team did a stellar job trough out the weekend, and it would have been nice to give them another result at their home race. The positive side is that we keep improving, closing the gap to the competition. Therefore, I hope that we can have an even better showing at Honda’s home race at Mid-Ohio end of July.”
Eversley took up the charge again after a long red-flag period to clean the track, and battled back to finish eighth. The result followed a pair of top-five runs in Lime Rock, giving the gregarious Georgian his fourth-consecutive top-10 finish.
“Mixed emotions leaving Road America. I’m happy to see our NSX program receive another top-five result, but disappointed with the incident in race two that caught out the #93,” Eversley said. “Peter and I were having a good scrap and the #99 Porsche (Fogarty) tried to move over on me before he was clear and spun into Peter and destroyed both cars. We can take away some positives, though, with our cars’ pace during the races being quite good, and our reliability has been excellent. I’m already looking forward to racing in Honda’s backyard at Mid-Ohio.”
The team will have nearly a month to repair its roughed-up race cars before heading to what is essentially the team’s second ‘home’ race of the year. The series next heads to the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington, Ohio July 28 – 30, a track that is less than 90 minutes from the Performance Manufacturing Center where the American-built supercar is built.
The Acura NSX GT3 racecar utilizes the production NSX’s lightweight multi-material body with aluminum-intensive space frame, and is powered by a 3.5-liter, 75-degree, twin-turbocharged DOHC V-6 engine. The engine uses the same design specifications as the production 2017 Acura NSX, including the block, heads, valve train, crankshaft, pistons and dry-sump lubrication system. The engine is paired with a 6-speed, sequential-shift racing gearbox, delivering power to the rear wheels.
Video recaps from this weekend’s Acura Pirelli World Challenge racing activities at Road America are being posted on the “Honda Racing/HPD” YouTube channel. Produced by the Carolinas Production Group, the video packages can be found in the 2017 HPD Trackside Video Playlist at: https://www.youtube.com/HondaRacingHPDTV.
GT3 Results Saturday:
Pos Driver Team Car Status
1 Adderly Fong Bentley Continental Absolute Racing 24 Laps
2 Patrick Long Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 + 0.685 sec
3 Michael Cooper Cadillac Racing Cadillac ATS- V.R. + 7.004
5 Peter Kox RealTime Racing Acura NSX GT3 + 10.248
10 Ryan Eversley RealTime Racing Acura NSX GT3 + 31.620
GT3 Results Sunday:
Pos Driver Team Car Status
1 Patrick Long Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 13 Laps
2 Adderly Fong Bentley Continental Absolute Racing + 0.239 sec
3 Johnny O’Connell Cadillac Racing Cadillac ATS- V.R. + 1.895
8 Ryan Eversley RealTime Racing Acura NSX GT3 + 12.263
NC Peter Kox RealTime Racing Acura NSX GT3 + 10 Laps