Long savors 'sweetest' PWC GT overall title

Patrick Long's battles for the Pirelli World Challenge GT Championship could not have been more different in 2016 and 2017. Even if one ignores the final outcome – a narrow second place in the points last season, and the Overall and Sprint GT championships this year – the way they happened was at opposite ends of the spectrum. The 2016 GT title came down to the last half lap, when Long, leading title rival Alvaro Parente by one position in the race and the championship, made a move around race leader Johnny O'Connell, who had put wheels in the dirt exiting Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca's Turn 4. O'Connell and Long touched in Turn 5, Long went into the dirt himself, and Parente sailed through for the championship.

In the final GT race of 2017 at Sonoma Raceway, Long could do whatever he wanted. The overall championship was his, and nothing Parente or eventual race winner Michael Cooper could do was going to change that. So Long raced hard and finished second.

"That was a good scenario for me. I didn't want to go into [the final race] thinking about two championships. I want to go hammer and tongs with Alvaro and give the fans the show that they deserve," Long said.

To get to the point where he didn't need to worry about the championship in the final race, he had to make sure he clinched it the day before. Starting fifth, he raced his way to third and set the fastest lap in the process, earning pole for the finale.

"My plan was to go out there and clinch the overall championship, which meant I had to stay close to Michael and Alvaro, so I wasn't coasting around my any stretch," he explained. "I found a championship that sort of got stripped out of my hands in the last half a lap last year, based on some errors by a car ahead of me. I felt like there was a little bit of risk, so I made a decision to play it a little bit safe mid-race and let the doors be opened for me."

Heading into the final race weekend, Long was not assured of the championship by any stretch. While Cooper, facing disappointment at having his Cadillac taken out in the second SprintX race at Circuit of The Americas two weeks before, had already congratulated Long, there were no guarantees. Had Long experienced some misfortune along with Cooper's double victories at Sonoma, the tables might have been turned.

"We have multiple zeroes through the championship, and a lot of us can tell a story of our car going out in the hands of a different driver. That's racing," he said. "I think when a few of my fellow factory drivers came to join for one-off rounds, I explained to them that when I went down into Turn 1 last year at Austin for the opener, that was as aggressive of a first lap in any championship I've raced in the last 15 years for Porsche. All over the world, they talk about Europe being aggressive, but I would say a first lap in this day and age of GT3 racing around the globe, with the ABS and the downforce these cars make, everybody is out there driving really, really hard and it just makes success that much sweeter."

Sweeter is a world Long will use again to describe this championship – at least the Overall, the one he thinks people will remember years down the road. It's pretty clear he's going to savor this one.
"I'm not going to play a political answer," he said. "It's something that I felt my team deserved last year, and they had to wait an extra year. For that reason, the cool down lap was one of the sweetest championship I've ever had in my career."