Victory catapults Long and Casey, Jr. into points lead

The last three Continental Tire Challenge TCR races have been a story of “so close, yet so far” for Tom Long and Britt Casey, Jr., with their last three finishes being fourth, second and third place. But at Laguna Seca, the co-drivers of the #77 Compass Racing Audi RS3 LMS returned to the top spot on the podium, leading 56 of 69 laps to win their fourth race of the season.
Long said: “We were trying to take care of the tyres and you just don’t know if you’ve done enough. You try to do the best job you can and try to manage the gap to the second-place car and in the end you start hearing noises. We just managed to hang on until the end.”
While the statistics show an easy victory, the #77 car still faced pressure from the pole-sitting #12 eEuroparts.com Racing Audi of Tom O’Gorman and Kenton Koch – coming off a win at Virginia International Raceway two weeks ago – and its sister car, the #74 of Kuno Wittmer and Rodrigo Sales who entered Saturday’s race leading the championship standings by four points over Long and Casey, Jr.
However, with the #74 finishing fifth, the positions have swapped in the standings, with Long and Casey, Jr. now leading by five.
“This one was really, really big,” said Casey “It’s awesome to win here and it’s absolutely imperative to our championship run. We have one race left to go and I think we really put ourselves in a solid position for that.”
After two hours of racing, the first four cars classified were covered by just 22 seconds: the #54 JDC-Miller Motorsports Audi of Michael Johnson and Stephen Simpson finished second with a gap of 11 second, while the #12 of O’Gorman and Koch and the #77 Compass Racing of Roy Block and Pierre Kleinubing followed 21 and 22 seconds behind the winning car.
The IMSA Continental Tire Challenge’s final round will be at Road Atlanta for the 2-hour Petit Le Mans on October 12/13