Tuesday, May 14, 2024 – Highlands, NJ – Vasser Sullivan drivers Frankie Montecalvo and Parker Thompson finished the Motul Course de Monterey P9 in the GTD class.
Montecalvo qualified the No. 12 Lexus RC F GT3 P5 in class. While many of the other GTD teams pitted earlier in the race once their silver rated drivers had reached the minimum drive time, the No. 12 elected to stretch Montecalvo’s stint in hopes of leap frogging the competition later in the race. As Montecalvo was on his in-lap to come into the pits and hand the car over to Thompson, a full course yellow came out, closing the pits and foiling the No. 12’s strategy.
From there, Montecalvo and Thompson would remain “off-strategy” in hopes of another yellow that would play to their advantage. The yellow never came and the No. 12 crossed the line P9 in class. While Montecalvo and Thompson had hopes for more, they were happy to leave the weekend with solid points for the championship.
“It was great to get back to Laguna Seca for the fourth round of the IMSA WeatherTech Championship. It was our first-time racing on the track since the repave, and right out of the gate, we showed that the Lexus was going to be a strong competitor,” said Montecalvo.
“I qualified the car P5 in class. We had a good start to the race, and I was able to maintain fifth position until we were ready to come in and have Parker take over. On our in-lap, a yellow flag came out and put us out of sequence. From there, we were hoping for another yellow later in the race to get us back on strategy, but unfortunately, we got the yellow we didn’t want, and we never got the yellow that we needed.”
“The Vasser Sullivan team did a phenomenal optimizing our car for the weekend and adapting our strategy for the best possible outcome. We come away from the weekend with solid points towards the championship and look forward to defending our win at Watkins Glen when we’re back on track next month in New York.”
The next race for Montecalvo is the Sahlen’s 6 Hours of the Glen at Watkins Glen International Raceway on Sunday, June 23rd. Be sure to follow Frankie on Facebook and Twitter to stay up to date with current broadcast times and all of Frankie’s racing news.
