The Pirelli World Challenge held rounds five and six at Mosport International Raceway over the weekend and Mike Skeen of Charlotte, North Carolina would come away with back to back wins in the GT Class with his yellow No. 2 CRP Racing/Cragar Wheels Chevrolet Corvette. Former Corvette Racing driver Johnny O’Connell also earned back to back podium finishes in his Pratt & Miller prepped Cadillac CTS-V Coupe.
Skeen won the first race on Saturday with a flag to flag victory and on Sunday, his yellow Corvette duplicated the previous day’s result going flag to flag and finishing in P1 despite the race ending under caution. Patrick Long and the No. 45 Privacy Star Porsche 911 GT3 ran behind Skeen the whole race and finished in 2nd place. Rounding out the podium with a third place finish was Johnny O’Connell and his No 3 Cadillac CTS-V Coupe.
“Who would’ve thought it? I’m amazed that this CRP Racing Team came back after a tough start to the year,” Skeen said. “It’s really good to get this double victory here at Mosport. We’re going into the summer break and hopefully we can kind of continue this momentum into the second half of the year and finish out strong.”
O’Connell finished 2nd in Saturday’s race and was looking to get into the hunt for the top spot on the podium when the caution flag fell and effectively ended the race.
“We just didn’t have enough for those guys,” O’Connell said. “I don’t know whether Porsche found another number on their map switch or what, but they showed dramatic improvement overnight. We had a good car. Actually, we might have even run faster than we did yesterday. If they’d gone green, I think I might have had something, because on clear laps, we were pretty darn close, but it didn’t happen. I’m just stoked for everybody at Cadillac. I mean, we have moved forward. We are five races into this gig and to get on the podium twice this weekend, we’re constantly improving and that’s been our objective all along.”
With the back to back wins, Skeen moves into third place in the GT Drivers Championship and is just 10 points behind the leader James Sofronas (626) and two point behind Patrick Long (618). Jason Daskalos is in 4th place with 561 points while Johnny O’Connell is 5th with 537 points. Porsche leads Cadillac in the Manufacturers Championship 45-18 while Volvo is third with 3 points.
Both rounds of the Pirelli World Challenge Grand Prix of Mosport presented by Optima Batteries will air on Versus on Saturday, June 18 at 3:00 p.m. EDT.
The Pirelli World Challenge now enters a “summer break” and returns to action with a doubleheader at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, August 5-7.
Source:
Pirelli World Challenge
