Porsche Carrera Cup North America brings intense battles to Atlanta

by Thomas Moore

The Porsche Carrera Cup North America enters the final two race weekends of the 2024 season without one of its class championships settled. The premier Porsche one-make series in the United States and Canada has been an intense battle throughout the year and the ultra-quick 2.54-mile, 12-turn Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta is always one of the hardest fought venues on the calendar. Twelve of 16 total rounds are complete in the all-Porsche 911 GT3 Cup race car series. Rounds 13 and 14 will support the 27th annual Petit Le Mans weekend, October 9 – 12, at the Braselton, Georgia-area track.

Practices one and two will be run on Wednesday, October 9. The 30-minute qualifying session for all classes will set the grid on Thursday morning with the first of two 40-minute rounds getting underway that afternoon. The second race of the weekend will take the green flag on Friday morning.

• Field. 28 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup race cars are entered for the weekend.

• Pro class. 15 | Pro-Am class. 7 | Masters class. 6 • Teams. Nine race teams are represented across all three classes.

• Entry list. The full Porsche Carrera Cup North America entry list can be found at: https://www.imsa.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/32/2024/10/02/2024PCCNAMRRAPreEventEntryList.pdf

• Series Track Record. 1:20.089, Laurin Heinrich, No. 12 311RS Motorsport, set in 2022.

• 2023 Race Winners. Series did not race at this venue in 2023

- Pro. Race 1 & 2. NA - Pro-Am. Race 1 & 2. NA - Masters (previously called Am). Race 1 & 2. NA

• Point Leaders.

Pro. Loek Hartog, No. 24 Kellymoss

Pro-Am. Alan Metni, No. 99 Kellymoss

Masters. Matt Halcome, No. 55 ACI Motorsports

Entrants. Kellymoss

Current Porsche Carrera Cup North America Championship Point Standings.

https://porschecarreracup.us/standings/

• Schedule. All times Eastern.

Wednesday, October 9.

11:15 a.m. – 11:45 a.m. – Practice 1

3:30 p.m. – 4:10 p.m. – Practice 2

Thursday, October 10.

8:35 a.m. – 9:05 a.m. – Qualifying (all classes)

5:05 p.m. – 5:45 p.m. – Race 1 (40-minutes)

Friday, October 11.

10:55 a.m. – 11:35 a.m. – Race 2 (40-minutes)

• Hometown heroes. While most drivers and teams in the series have a connection to Road Atlanta, two drivers are Georgians. Masters class championship leader Matt Halcome lives in Dallas, Georgia. The pilot of the No. 55 “Mystery Machine” Porsche won his first Porsche Carrera Cup North America title (PA991 class) here at the 2021 season-finale. Richard Edge lives in Atlanta. The driver of the No. 18 Porsche sits in third place of the Masters class entering rounds 13 and 14. Both drivers race for ACI Motorsports which is headquartered three hours away in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

• Legacy Track. Road Atlanta is a “Legacy Track” on the 2024 Porsche Carrera Cup schedule. The track joins Sebring International Raceway, Watkins Glen International, Road America and Indianapolis Motor Speedway as tracks that hosted the premier one-make race series in its 2021 debut season. With the intense travel schedule last year, Road Atlanta was not included in the 2023 season. However, the series returns for 2024 given the popularity of the track and the importance of the Petit Le Mans race weekend.

• History maker. Road Atlanta was the home of the Porsche Carrera Cup North America finale its first two seasons, 2021 and 2022. Both years, the champions were crowned in dramatic fashion. Seb Priaulx won two of the three Porsche Carrera Cup North America races run on the 2.54-mile track earning himself the first Al Holbert Cup awarded to the overall champion of the series in 2021. Parker Thompson captured the first of two races held at the Braselton, Georgia facility in 2022 to win the overall title. Since 2023, the championship finale has been held at the Circuit of The Americas (COTA) in Austin, Texas. The 2024 champions will be crowned there again this year, October 18 – 20, in support of the United States Grand Prix Formula 1 ® weekend.

Past overall race winners at Road Atlanta.

2021. Race 1. Seb Priaulx, Race 2. Kay van Berlo, Race 3. Seb Priaulx

2022. Race 1. Parker Thompson, Race 2. Laurin Heinrich

• To the point. Loek Hartog (Netherlands) remains comfortably at the front of the Pro class field but has not locked up the championship entering round 13. Hartog has raced the No. 24 Racing For Children's Kellymoss Porsche to seven overall wins including the most recent four races. He added three additional podiums to tally for a total of 262 points. The Kellymoss driver is 76 points ahead of PT Autosport JDX Racing driver Alex Sedgwick (United Kingdom) and 95 markers ahead of Ryan Yardley (New Zealand) in third place. Sedgwick has one win this season in the No. 98 while Yardley also holds a single victory driving the No. 78 Topp Racing Performance Porsche.

The Pro-Am category has always been the most hotly contested, and 2024 is no exception. Two Indy race wins jumped Alan Metni (Austin, Texas) from third place to the points lead in the No. 99 Kellymoss Porsche. The 2022 class champion holds a three-point gap over Moisey Uretsky (Miami, Florida) in the No. 44 Baby Bull Racing machine. Marco Cirone (Canada) – who entered Indianapolis in the lead – fell to third but remains only five points behind Metni. In fact, 2021 and 2023 champion Efrin Castro (Dominican Republic) sits only 20 points behind his Kellymoss teammate in the No. 65, still in the fight for his third Pro-Am class championship.

Matt Halcome (Dallas, Georgia) has seen the Masters class field close behind him coming to the final two race weekends. However, the driver of the No. 55 ACI Motorsports Porsche remains 41 points ahead of Chris Bellomo (Portola Valley, California) in the No. 68 Porsche prepared by Kellymoss. Kellymoss retains the Entrants standings with 251 points, 35 markers ahead of JDX Racing.

There are still 112 points remaining in the season. A driver can capture up to 56 points in a weekend. A victory pays 25 points, second place counts for 20 and third place is awarded with 17 points. A pole position is worth two points while a fastest race lap will add an additional point to the total of a driver in each class. Each of the two races pays a total of 28 points.

• Broadcast. Races air live at PorscheCarreraCup.us, on the Porsche Motorsport North America YouTube channel at: www.youtube.com/@PorscheMotorsportNorthAmerica, on the Peacock streaming app and at IMSA.tv.

• On the web. www.PorscheCarreraCup.us.

  • Image courtesy of Porsche Motorsport North America.

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