Skeen Sweeps Pirelli World Challenge At Road America

Elkhart Lake, WI – The Pirelli World Challenge sports car series returned to Elkhart Lake’s Road America this weekend for the first time since 2009.

Two events were held for each of the class groups on Friday and Saturday with 28 entries running in the Touring Car group and 45 cars competing for GT honors. The Pirelli-sponsored series ran as part of the Gardner Denver 200 NASCAR Nationwide Series feature event on Saturday.

GT-GTA/GTS

Race 1-Friday:

Audi R8 driver Mike Skeen, Charlotte, NC, took his first win of the season here Friday, when he captured GT and overall race honors, beating the McLaren of Robert Thorne by 1.8 seconds. Third was Tim Burgmeister, of Langfeld, Germany in a Porsche. Veteran Corvette pilot Johnny O’Connell of Flowery Branch, GA, drove his Cadillac-CTS back to a seventh–place finish after incurring a stop-and-go penalty on lap 3 for jumping the start and moving to an early lead. O’Connell, who won two PWC races three weeks ago in Detroit, came into the Road America round in the GT series’ points lead.  Skeen averaged 111.139 mph for the 23-lap run. GTS honors went to Nic Jonsson, Buford, GA, whose Kia Optima won its class by 9.09 seconds over Toronto’s Mark Wilkins in another Kia.

Race 2-Saturday:

Mike Skeen and his Audi R8 made it two wins in a row Saturday morning, capturing the 16-lap GT class by 1.74 seconds over the Cadillacs of Andy Pilgrim and Johnny O’Connell. Steen averaged 76.288 mph. The race was red-flagged for a serious lap 4 crash near the Turn 2 tunnel that involved the Ferrari 458 of Anthony Lazzaro and the McLaren 12C of Alex Figge. Both drivers were checked and released from the infield medical center. GTS driver Nic Jonsson and his Kia Optima also made it a weekend sweep with his second win, this time beating Jack Roush Jr.’s Mustang.

TC/TCA/TCB

Race 1-Friday:

Plainfield, IL’s Steven Doherty dominated the TC class in the 14-lap run over Road America’s winding 4.04- mile circuit. Piloting his Skullcandy Team Nissan Ultima Coupe, Doherty took overall race honors, as well as winning his class by 6.33 seconds in his first Pirelli World Challenge race of the season. Second in class was the Honda Civic Si of Toronto’s Michael DiMeo who had won the first six races on the 2014 schedule. He was followed by the Mazda of Texan Adam Poland.  Doherty averaged 83.178 MPH. Shea Holbrook pushed her Honda Civic to a TCA class win and rookie Paul Holton’s Honda Fit took TCB honors while capturing his first series win.

Race 2-Friday:

Adam Poland, who finished third earlier in the day, captured first place in Race 2 for TC –class cars.  He defeated point’s leader Michael DiMeo who was runner-up for the second time today. Poland, whose Mazda MX-5 started from the pole, won the 16-lap race by 10.423 sec., averaging 96.125 mph. A three-way battle for TCA honors went to Mt. Vernon, OH, Kia Forte driver Jason Wolfe, while British Columbia driver Glenn Nixon exchanged the class lead several times with NASCAR Nationwide Series pilot Ryan Reed before Nixon’s MINI Cooper prevailed in TCB. This weekend was Reed’s first competition in the Pirelli series.

Paul Gohde

Paul Gohde heard the sound of race cars early in his life.

Growing up in suburban Milwaukee, just north of Wisconsin State Fair Park in the 1950’s, Paul had no idea what “that noise” was all about that he heard several times a year. Finally, through prodding by friends of his parents, he was taken to several Thursday night modified stock car races on the old quarter-mile dirt track that was in the infield of the one-mile oval -and he was hooked.

The first Milwaukee Mile event that he attended was the 1959 Rex Mays Classic won by Johnny Thomson in the pink Racing Associates lay-down Offy built by the legendary Lujie Lesovsky. After the 100-miler Gohde got the winner’s autograph in the pits, something he couldn’t do when he saw Hank Aaron hit a home run at County Stadium, and, again, he was hooked.

Paul began attending the Indianapolis 500 in 1961, and saw A. J. Foyt’s first Indy win. He began covering races in 1965 for Racing Wheels newspaper in Vancouver, WA as a reporter/photographer and his first credentialed race was Jim Clark’s historic Indy win.Paul has also done reporting, columns and photography for Midwest Racing News since the mid-sixties, with the 1967 Hoosier 100 being his first big race to report for them.

He is a retired middle-grade teacher, an avid collector of vintage racing memorabilia, and a tour guide at Miller Park. Paul loves to explore abandoned race tracks both here and in Europe, with the Brooklands track in Weybridge England being his favorite. Married to Paula, they have three adult children and two cats.

Paul loves the diversity of all types of racing, “a factor that got me hooked in the first place.”

racingnation.com

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