Stevenson Motorsports Watkins Glen Post-Race Report

Watkins Glen, New York (27 June 2015) – Stevenson Motorsports returned to victory lane on Saturday in IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge competition as Andrew Davis and Robin Liddell combined to add another chapter of success for the team, winning the Continental Tire 150 at The Glen with the No. 6 Stevenson Motorsports Camaro Z/28.R. The victory is the third consecutive IMSA win for Davis and Liddell, who grew their lead in the championship standings. 

Davis opened the race from fifth on the rainy grid, and was running in second by just the 18th lap. A lap 27 pit stop saw Liddell take control, returning to the race fifth in the order before taking the lead on lap 34. The race was briefly halted for the heavy rains with a red flag before ending under yellow flag conditions as Stevenson added to a strong record of success at the track.The No. 9 Stevenson Motorsports Camaro Z/28.R was able to recover from an early setback to finish fifth in Round 4 of the 2015 championship with Matt Bell and Lawson Aschenbach. Bell opened the race from sixth on the grid, but was immediately dealing with an issue that forced an early extra pit stop. With some very swift diagnosis and repair work from the team, Bell returned to action still on the lead lap, albeit restarting in 42nd overall.For lap after lap, Bell made the most of the conditions and the Camaro Z/28.R to make progress towards the front before turning the car over to Aschenbach. The forward progress came to a frustrating halt when the race was red-flagged, but the duo's hard work earned them another top-five finish.“The conditions were treacherous,” said Davis. “At the very beginning it wasn’t as bad but it got worse and worse through my stint. At the end, it was at its worst and that’s why we had to go red flag. But I’m just thrilled for Chevrolet, for Stevenson Motorsports and our Camaro Z/28.R. The conditions obviously helped us a bunch today. We stayed clean and ran a good race. Robin (Liddell) did a phenomenal job and the guys in the pits as always. I’m thrilled for the team and thrilled for John and Susan Stevenson.”“It was really tough, to be honest,” said Liddell. “At any moment you can go flying off the track. The team and everyone gets pumped up and saying how well you are in the wet. But I don’t think anyone realizes how close we are to throwing it off every single corner. We had a couple of scary moments. The conditions were quite bad. No one wants to finish a race under yellow, even for us being lucky enough to win it. Ultimately, I do respect the decision of race control because the conditions were tricky and there was a lot of standing water around the track. We didn’t call for it to be stopped, but it was tough out there. In the end, it’s high-risk and there can be a lot of incidents. I’m very happy for the win. It’s great for our points - Stevenson Motorsports and Chevrolet. We’ll take it.”“The guys did an awfully good job,” said team owner Johnny Stevenson. “Andrew was amazing. Matt Bell's performance today was just unbelievable and I just hate it for Lawson (Aschenbach) that we finished like we did and he didn't get a chance to kind of move to the front because he was poised to do so. I’m tickled with the finish. Gets us in a good place and gets good points going. Just great guys, Mike Johnson called a great race. The crew, it doesn't get any better than this!”“Three in a row, Watkins Glen has been very good to us,” said team manager Mike Johnson. “It's funny, when Stevenson started, this was our worst track. We would find more ways to lose on the last lap than anywhere. And what, now in the last few years two six hour wins and a few GS wins. I’m just really happy for the team, we overcame some balance performance things. Obviously the rain throws a big wrench into that. I don't know where we would have been in the dry, I think we probably would have still been up in the front. Now we know what the car will do in the rain and we can go to Mosport (Canadian Tire Motorsport Park).”“The problem at the beginning is that we had an ABS failure from the second warm-up lap," said Bell. “That makes the car really difficult to deal with in the dry, so it added another level of stress. We had to come in and fix the ABS. We dove in on the second caution, and the guys pulled the front-left off and screwed the sensor back in. I had to start at the back of the ST field.  We had the power so you could pass on the straights, but passing in the corners was impossible. But the Camaro Z/28.R was perfect and exactly what we needed in the rain. We still have the fastest lap in the race. We finished fifth, which is where we started. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but we know how fast the car was and could have won the race. But we didn’t.”“It took about a lap for [the tires] to come in,” said Aschenbach of his out-lap. “The car was really good. Matt (Bell) was obviously showing that the car was really fast so I was pretty excited about getting out there. We were just kind of hoping for that one caution to pack everybody up because of the problems at the beginning of the race for us. But it's kind of just a shame, the track honestly was fine (during the red flag). It was okay to race on and I'm still sort of shocked they went with the red flag. But in the end, I'm happy for the No. 6 car guys. They're on a roll here, three wins in a row! But the No. 9 car will get one sooner or later. I want to thank everybody at Stevenson Motorsports. Our team Chevy Camaro Z/28.R was was fast. It was fast in the dry and it was really, really good in the rain. Maybe we can get another rain race here later on in the year that'll help us out!”Stevenson Motorsports will return to IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge action in two weeks.The Watkins Glen event will be televised on FOX Sports 1 at 10:00 AM ET Sunday, July 5.