GT3 / 07 May 2018

NSX GT3 on podium again at Mid-Ohio

The NSX GT3 maintained its superb start to the IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship with a second podium finish in three races at the demanding Mid-Ohio circuit.

Having started fourth on the GTD grid, Katherine Legge ran in the top three throughout the first half of the race in her Meyer Shank Racing with Curb Agajanian machine.

She handed over the car to co-driver Alvaro Parente, who moved into second with an hour remaining and then chased down the leader to agonisingly miss out on victory by just 0.191 seconds.

The result took Parente and Legge into second place in the GTD Drivers' Championship with Meyer Shank second in the Teams' points and Acura in the same position in the Manufacturers' standings.

The sister car of Lawson Aschenbach and Justin Marks ran convincingly all afternoon and finished fifth to continue the 100 per cent finishing record of the NSX GT3 in IMSA competition.

The NSX GT3 also achieved its best Super GT finish this weekend; the result coming unusually on a Friday as part of Fuji Speedway's Golden Week.

Modulo Drago Corse's Ryo Michigami secured the team's best GT300 qualifying spot of 2018 in 11th and he and co-driver Hiroki Otsu drove superbly to leap into contention for a top-six finish almost immediately. Eighth place was a deserved result for the team (below).

CarGuy Racing qualified 13th, but suffered a setback on the opening lap when Kei Cozzolino was involved in an incident, which resulted in front-end damage and a long pitstop for repairs. Cozzolino, Naoki Yokomizo and Takeshi Kimura finished 26th.

The cars were competing as part of the NSX GT3 Customer Racing Programme; a global collaborative project with JAS Motorsport responsible for assembly of all cars. Honda Performance Development and M-TEC handle sales and technical support in North America and Japan respectively.

Stefano Fini, JAS Motorsport NSX GT3 Project Leader, said:"It's been an incredibly positive weekend for the NSX GT3 once again. Second place in Mid-Ohio is a fantastic result and the closest the car has come to winning this year. The fact that the car has nine IMSA starts and nine IMSA finishes this year is a great sign of its reliability. It's also tremendously encouraging to see the pace of the car in Super GT after Ryo and Hiroki had a trouble-free race. Eighth place is a very good platform on which to build with the teams from the Honda GT3 Customer Racing Programme."