For the fourth season in a row, Road Atlanta delivered some of the most exciting and frenzied racing on the Alpha Touring Challenge schedule. The top three qualifiers were separated by a mere 0.025 seconds, setting the tone for the tense racing that was to follow. The first heat saw no less than seven cars vying for the win. While Slugnificent led the most laps of the heat, he eventually lost out to Bajulaz for 2nd, and Zuñiga for 1st. Zuñiga might have been the fastest car on track, never having trouble finding his way up into the battle for the lead, and capitalizing on his pole position. He secured the victory in the first heat, where championship leader McKinzie brought home 4th, sandwiched between championship rivals Slugnificent ahead and Shink behind. James D Carr ran with the top cars all day, and has positioned himself nicely for Rookie of the Season and a potential top five championship finish thus far. Swirydowicz ended up getting shuffled back into 7th after starting on the front row, his worst finish in any event excluding DNFs.
The second heat played out in a much different fashion. Shink, Carr, and Bajulaz fell away from the leaders and got mired in battles with Nick Beaver for 4th. Meanwhile, McKinzie started on pole but quickly lost the lead to his teammate on lap 1. From there, Slugnificent opened up a commanding lead while Zuñiga found his way around McKinzie and began chasing him down. It was a lonely race for McKinzie from there, eventually ceding 3rd to Swirydowicz in the closing laps. Zuñiga caught Slugnificent on the final lap and executed a crossover move in the chicane to pull alongside Slug heading down to the final corner before the finish. They made contact and initially it appeared that Zuñiga had triumphed, but the contact had pushed him over the incident limit and subsequently dropped him to a devastating 14th place finish, promoting everyone behind him up a position. Slugnificent was credited with victory in the second heat, while Swirydowicz finished a nice recovery from the first heat to secure 2nd.
Zuñiga’s penalty would cause Jacob Whalley to slide up into 8th and start on pole for the final heat. Those final thirty minutes were filled with chaos and shock results. While battling for the lead early on, Slugnificent clipped Swirydowicz in the chicane and slowed both Shink and Whalley, allowing McKinzie to sail into the lead unopposed, followed by Nick Beaver. Beaver would take the lead and McKinzie continued to follow him without actually fighting him, keeping the drivers behind out of slipstream range. When the time for pitstops came, all hell broke loose. Crew chiefs across the pit wall miscalculated on fuel and many cars ended up over-fueling and spending an absurd amount of time in their pit stalls. McKinzie, Gurkan Demir, Zuñiga, and Whalley all caught the issue, mitigated the damage, and came out ahead of drivers like Beaver, Shink, Swirydowicz, and Carr. Demir, who had finished 14th in the first heat and 11th in the second, suddenly found himself just two seconds behind McKinzie with a chance to win in his first Alpha Touring Challenge start. Beaver and Zuñiga managed to get past Whalley in the closing laps for 3rd and 4th, whilst Demir pushed just a little too hard and ceded a couple more seconds to McKinzie, who went on to take the checkered flag at his home race for the second time in four seasons.
Shink and Swirydowicz ended up 6th and 7th, while Slugnificent finished 16th. A sharp blow to both Slug and Shink, who both had to watch their championship rival take victory. Carr finished a respectable 8th, but was perhaps a bit disappointed considering the pace he had in practice sessions prior to the race. Rzepka continued his consistent finishes with 9th, and David Bauer mounted one of the best recovery drives of the season, going from 26th to 10th in the final heat.
Next week, the Alpha Touring Challenge heads to Watkins Glen for an Alpha Challenge.
Alpha Touring Challenge 