Action Express Post-Belle Isle Report

João Barbosa and Christian Fittipaldi arrived for the Chevrolet Sports Car Classic at Belle Isle Park second in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, and now they leave in first.

"I think that is very positive that we are back on top in the championship," says João Barbosa.  We are hitting halfway in the championship so it's always important to be in that position."

The pair sits atop the championship standings along with the No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing Corvette, deadlocked with the exact same number of points for the season.  Barbosa says of the standings that "it is going to be very tight until the end with four cars that have a real shot at winning the championship."

It was a second place run that put the No. 5 Mustang Sampling Corvette DP in this position.  After Christian Fittipaldi's impressive qualifying performance, the duo started on the pole and ultimately drove into a podium finish.  Qualifying was not perfect for the team, however.  A final-lap spin put a lot of wear onto the car's Continental Tires.

"Actually I wasn't sure what to expect after the spin yesterday," says Fittipaldi of the mishap. "I flat-spotted three tires big time. We managed to change one because you can do that in the rules. Then we babied the other two. The car was awesome to drive on right-hand corners. It was a little bit harder to drive on left-hand turns."

The worn tires did not seem to slow the No. 5 machine down, though, and the pair put forth a dominant effort.  "It was a good race," says Barbosa.  "Christian [Fittipaldi] did an amazing effort in the beginning with the conditions he had getting the car in the lead."

It was traffic created by the other two classes that kept the Mustang Sampling car out of Victory Lane.  "My hands were tied," says Barbosa after falling to second.  "For the second year in a row to do a restart behind slower cars; I was trying to go on the inside of the two PC cars that were fighting for position.  I picked one side and Jordan (Taylor) picked the right side at that point. I had nowhere to go."

The outlook is anything but negative for the two-time defending IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Champions, however.  "It's very important that we finish strong in second place and we are right there in the championship. That is where we want to be."

Barbosa and Fittipaldi's teammates, Dane Cameron and Eric Curran, also drove an extremely impressive race yesterday.  Eric Curran started on the second row in the Whelen Engineering/Team Fox Corvette DP, but a near disaster only 15 minutes into the race sent the No. 31 machine to pit road for 17 laps.

A spin by another DP left last year's race winners with a heavily-damaged Chevrolet Corvette.  "It's unfortunate that our Whelen Engineering No. 31 Corvette was so fast here, said Curran, who was driving at the time.  "We won here last year; we wanted to duplicate that again. We think we had a shot at it."

"I just had nowhere to go. It's kind of disappointing, but it is what it is. We just have to keep moving forward."

Despite this trouble early on, the No. 31 crew rallied to repair the car, and repair it they did.  Curran was appreciative of the team's effort: "all the Action Express guys worked like crazy."

Returning to the street circuit, Dane Cameron piloted the repaired car with incredible speed, turning some of the fastest laps of the weekend and actually going in the books with the fastest lap of the race, a full eight tenths of a second faster than that of the race winner.

In addition to showcasing the remarkable performances this weekend by all four drivers, this year's race at Belle Isle also extends Chevrolet's undefeated streak in Motor City.  "It was a great day to finish 1-2 here for Chevrolet," says Barbosa.  "They put in a lot to this program, and it is great to reward them with this finish."