The 2011 race marks back-to-back victories for RSR Motorsports at the GRAND-AM Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge race this last weekend in New Jersey. This year, however, RSR did one better — taking both first and second place, which marks the first double podium finish for the Arizona-based team.
Owen Trinkler and Sarah Cattaneo shared the first place finish in MINI #198, while Chris Puskar and Tom Dyer shared second place in MINI #197. The event marked Sarah Cattaneo’s first series victory and Tom Dyer’s first time piloting a MINI in anger. Both are worthy achievements to be proud of.
“Wow, what a weekend!” says Smalley. “We’ve won at New Jersey two years in a row now, and this puts us in the championship chase again. We’ve engineered a competitive car, and our drivers did a fantastic job.”
“I stayed behind the leader and tried to keep a good pace so we could conserve our tires,” says Trinkler of the final laps of the race. “We got a caution with about twenty minutes to go, and I got a good run on the restart. I passed for the lead in the same place I did last year.”
“I’ll be on cloud nine for at least a week!” says Cattaneo. She also had a great qualifying session, taking the third starting spot. “I waited in the pits and went out later. It took a while to find the right break in traffic, but it couldn’t have turned out any better.”
Head on over to RSR Motorsports for their full accounting of this win, and to keep up with all their racing exploits. Congrats, team!
<p>Yes. That is truly awesome. Glad to see that David can not only hang with the Goliaths, but beat them…</p>
<p>Love it. Better and better. Congratulations</p>
<p>Great news for RSR! Congrats to a job well done.</p>
<p>Matt</p>
<p>I’ve watched them when they have come up to The Glen and have been impressed by the RSR organization; very low key and very capable. Also, I’ve been really surprised about the cars. I thought they would be at a real disadvantage at a track with long straights like the Glen, but that’s not the case. Anyway, Great Victory!</p>
<p>Another great run by RSR, keep up the good work guys.</p>
<p>We’ll be racing for the Championship at Mid-Ohio on Saturday, September 17th!</p>
<p>The RSR Crew.</p>
<p>Run smart, stay out of trouble, wait for Honda and Kia to destroy each other, and you guys can win this thing!</p>
<p>Very sad to hear that RSR will not be campaigning the MINI next season. Completely understandable that in racing on must always be looking for the complete package that will keep the team competitive. Hopefully there is a chance that RSR can come back to MINI at some point in the future. As an aside, I’ve wondered why it seems that R53s are much more common in racing than the R56s.</p>
<p>More popular with RSR but certainly not near as popular as the R56 in Euopean series.</p>