Bowmanville, Ontario (8 July 2018) Mustang Sampling Racing drivers Christian Fittipaldi and Filipe Albuquerque finished fourth in the No. 5 Mustang Sampling Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park (CTMP) on Sunday after making a strong push forward in the two hour, forty-minute race.
Fittipaldi opened the race from behind the wheel for the opening segment of the race, moving from tenth in the order to run seventh as he made the call to pit lane to turn the Mustang Sampling Cadillac over to Albuquerque.
After returning to race pace holding 10th position, Albuquerque put his head down as he made steady forward progress. Moving up to sixth by lap 50, he raced as high as second as a range of pit strategies emerged through five caution periods. Moving up to fourth as the race clicked off the 100th lap, a pair of late race restarts didn’t faze the Portuguese ace as he was able to take the checkered flag fourth in the order.
“I am really happy with the team and where we came from today,” said Albuquerque. “We were P11 and we recovered a lot even with not a great first pit stop. It was purely pit stops and overtaking since some of the Prototypes had so much pace to overtake on the straights. It would have been a podium under normal conditions. I am happy with the job of the team and we made solid points, but it was impossible to do better than this today.”
“Action Express did a flawless race but this is what we strive for,” said Fittipaldi. “We come to win races and as Gary (Nelson) always says, ‘expect to win.’ We are always trying our very best and Action Express did an awesome job with both cars. Considering we started in the last row, we finished third and fourth as a team which is tremendous. It is great for points for the championship and we continue one and two. I think that will be very important especially at this point in the year when there are only three more races to go. All in all it was a positive day. We are happy to collect the points and ready to turn the page to Road America.”
Next up on the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship schedule for the team will be the Continental Road Race Showcase at Road America on August 3-5.