(Bowmanville, ONT, 17 May 2015) Bentley Team Dyson Racing hit its stride this weekend with top finishes in both ends of the Pirelli World Challenge double-header at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park. Butch Leitzinger and Chris Dyson brought their Bentley Continental GT3s home third and fourth in Saturday’s 50-minute sprint race and then took it up a notch on Sunday, with Leitzinger and Dyson finishing second and third.
Leitzinger, whose car had been severely damaged in a crash at Long Beach, CA last month, set the weekend’s fastest lap Sunday afternoon while closely pursuing race winner Johnny O’Connell. Leitzinger finished right on O’Connell’s bumper, with Dyson just a few seconds behind.
“Johnny and I were both flat out the whole way,” Leitzinger said following the post-race celebrations. “Neither of us were holding anything back. In a straight fight I couldn’t get past him, but Johnny couldn’t pull away at all. I was hoping lapped traffic might give me a shot at passing him, but every time we came up to lap slower cars it was pretty much the same for both of us.”
Leitzinger paid tribute to the Dyson Racing crew that put in a major effort to restore his #20 Continental GT3 to like-new condition after Leitzinger was crashed by another driver into a concrete barrier at Long Beach. “The guys worked so hard to get my car ready for this weekend,” he said. “I’m so grateful. I know that the good results that Chris and I had this weekend helped justify all their work.”
Bentley Team Dyson Racing CEO Rob Dyson pronounced himself satisfied with the team’s performance over the weekend. “You always want to win, but if you don’t win, then you want to do as well as you can. Chris’s second-place finish at Long Beach last month and Butch and Chris’s good results here confirm that we’re making good progress at unlocking all the performance in the Bentley. More good results are on the way.”
“We have always done well when we had rolling starts,” Dyson said. “But we’ve had a persistent issue with standing starts, which is a feature of Pirelli World Challenge racing. We have worked really hard on it lately. The standing start for Sunday’s race went better for us and the team continues to make progress in that area.”
Dyson said he wished he could have been right in the mix with Leitzinger and O’Connell at the end of Sunday’s race. Earlier in the stint he had been running in very close company “But there was a traffic issue and I lost several seconds that I just couldn’t make up. We were all really flying – nothing held back. Our friends at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park got a big crowd today and the spectators saw an excellent race.”
After a weekend off the Pirelli World Challenge reconvenes 29-31 May on Belle Isle in the middle of the Detroit River, sharing the bill with the Verizon IndyCar Series at the Detroit Grand Prix.
This weekend’s races at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park will be featured on CBS Sports Network Sunday, May 24, at 5:00 PM.