Steven Aghakhani broke back into the IMSA VP Racing SportsCar Challenge win column in an unusual way, but he’ll gladly take it.
Aghakhani, the Le Mans Prototype 3 points leader, crossed the finish line second Saturday in the No. 6 MLT Motorsports Ligier JS P320 to Jagger Jones, driver of the No. 87 FastMD Racing with Remstar Duqueine D08. In postrace technical inspection, however, Jones’ car was found to have camber in excess of the permitted maximum and moved to the rear of the eight-car P3 class in the provisional race results.
The revision handed Aghakhani his third win of the season and first since he swept the season-opening doubleheader at Daytona International Speedway in January. Jones saw his bid for a fifth straight victory negated by the infraction.
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“It wasn’t exactly how we wanted to get a win, but nonetheless a win is still a win in the end,” Aghakhani said. “We’ll absolutely take it and we’ve extended our points lead by a comfortable margin. Our race pace was there (Saturday); we were keeping it safe, looking forward to the entire season.”
Aghakhani takes a provisional 440-point championship lead into Sunday’s 45-minute race. With such a sizable advantage, he hinted that he may let the reins loosen on the No. 6 Ligier.
“We might show off a little bit more aggression,” he said. “We definitely did show it in qualifying, putting the car out on pole. But again, the biggest thing is bringing the car back home safe. The last thing we want is a DNF for the points gap to close.”
Jonathan Woolridge, a Canadian who won at CTMP last year, finished second in the revised order in the No. 38 Performance Tech Motorsports Ligier, with Performance Tech teammate Alex Kirby third in the No. 7 Ligier.