jrgordonsenior

Bobby won both Saturday and Sunday' races to take the IMSA GT3 Cup Challenge 2007 Championship at Laguna Seca today. Charles Scardina was leading Bobby by 2 points for the Championship after finishing second behind Bobby in Saturday's race. On the second lap of today's race Charles, who started in the second position, made a risky pass on the pole sitter Tony Rivera as they turned down into the cork screw. The collided sending Charles into the pits for repairs. By the time he came out he was 2 laps down and out of the race. Bobby took the lead and never looked back collecting his second win over the weekend and winning the Championship. Dino Steiner was second, Tony Rivera worked his way back to take third, and Galen Beiker was fourth.

Congratulations to both Bobby and Charles for a hard fought exciting season of racing....

c4bliss

John, both races Sat and Sun were great! Have almost 500 photos of them going at in through turn 2-4.

Any thoughts on #23 ingorning the black flag and finally coming unglued in the pits when he came in? (at least according to the announcers).

jrgordonsenior

I don't blame him, I'd have been pissed off too. The IMSA reps appear really biased. He was sitting 3rd. and had been trying to get around Dino Steiner for several laps. He bumped him slightly in the rear as they came into turn 11, a slow 2nd. gear turn that leads onto the straightway. It wasn't hard, there was no damage to either car, and didnt affect the race as far as I could see (Steiner may view it differently). Later in that lap he finally got around Dino and that's when the IMSA reps decided to black flag him. So he ignored them for awhile while he chased the leader Bobby Faieta knowing that coming into the pits would end his race.

IMSA is a very political organization that favors certain individuals or perhaps organizations. Their announcer during the race spent almost all of his time talking about ways Scardina could get back in the race instead of actually calling the race which was really exciting up front without Scardina.

IMSA allowed 2 "guest drivers" to enter these last races of the season when the series Championship was seperated by only 2 points. Sure enough, one of the guests qualifies 2nd on Saturday and gets into an "incident" on the second lap taking out Tom Pank. On Sunday, the other guest gets the pole. He's the guy who mixed it up with Scardina and he received a stop-n-go penalty for that contact. That he was able to recover and finish 3rd. is remarkable especially for a "amateur". Neither of these ringers should have been allowed to participate in the final race of the seaon when the Championship was on the line. Their participation had an adverse effect on the races and the Championship outcome and simply wasn't fair to all the racers who participated all season long. WTF were they thinking? It reminded me of a WWF Championship match .....

c4bliss

Yup, i agree there. The guy did spend the majority of the race yapping about the guy trying to catch up. We figured that he was pissed off about the black flag and was going to refuse to come in after the first two laps of being flagged. We got a kick out of the way the announcer called it when he got out of the car to "discuss" the flag with the officials... But still a good race and pretty clean from what we saw.

mark kibort

This a pic of laguna from the andretti hairpin, I mean, Andretti Boneyard. This pic
was from the speed GT race that accumulated cars in the sand pit, fortunately, the cup car race wasnt as bad.

jrgordonsenior

The pic above is from the Speed World Challenge race not the IMSA race. The iMSA race had it's share of bumping, but not 5 cars off together in turn 2....

c4bliss

damn! WE missed the speed gt race and were sitting right up on the hill above what looks like the caddy. What a great shot that would of been!