Acura NSX GT3 Evo Wins 2020 SRO GT World Challenge America Manufacturers’ Championship

• Racers Edge Acura NSX GT3 Evo finishes third in GT season finale to clinch title
• Trent Hindman and Shelby Blackstock claim Silver Class driver’s and team crowns
• Team Honda Racing Acura NSX GT3 Evo finishes third overall in 8-hour race

The Racers Edge Motorsports #93 Acura NSX GT3 Evo closed the 2020 SRO Motorsports GT World Challenge America campaign in style on a rainy Sunday in Indianapolis, finishing third in the season’s final race to win the series Manufacturers Championship for Acura for the second consecutive year.

The three-hour season finale was actually a race within a race, as the finishing order for the SRO cars was determined by their position after three hours of the inaugural Indianapolis eight-hour SRO Intercontinental GT Challenge event, which included the GT cars from the IGTC as well as the SRO GT World Challenge America cars. The Racers Edge Acura was joined in the field by a similar Acura NSX GT3 Evo  campaigned by IGTC series regular Team Honda Racing, featuring Acura IMSA DPi driver Dane Cameron alongside Mario Farnbacher and Renger Van Der Zande.

The endurance contest started with about 30 minutes of panic for teams and drivers ,as rain started falling around the 2.43-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course just about the time the green flag flew. Falling harder each lap, the rain forced teams to pit for wet-weather tires at different intervals, which staggered the running order as teams immediately found themselves on different pit strategies.

The #93 Racers Edge NSX started from fourth, with Trent Hindman, Shelby Blackstock and Robert Megennis behind the wheel, but fell back to ninth early after pitting for rain tires in the opening laps. Things went from bad to worse soon less than an hour later, when the team suffered the first of two cut tires, the first coming just as the car passed the start/finish line, forcing the team to limp all the way around the course before hitting pitting for a replacement.

Meanwhile, the #30 Team Honda Racing Acura played cat-and-mouse with a pair of BMWs at the front of the field, leading when the gap in pit strategy between the team played in Acura’s favor, but the team’s shot at victory evaporated with about two hours to run when an electronics issue during a pit stop caused the team to lose a lap to the leaders. The #30 Acura continued battling, and came home in third, while the #93 ran in the top 10 all day before ending up in seventh place.

The finish in the SRO event, sealed the SRO GT World Challenge America Manufacturers’ Championship for Acura for the second consecutive year, with wins coming from The #93 Racers Edge car and its sister machine, driven early in the year by Martin Barkey and Kyle Marcelli. The finish also sealed the Silver Class Drivers’ and Teams’ titles for Racers Edge, giving the Acura team a second-straight championship. The Acura NSX GT3 Evo, sold and supported by HPD in North America, runs in both Sprint and Endurance racing competition around the world.

Honda Racing social media content and videos from the season finale at Indianapolis Motor Speedway are available on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/hondaracing_hpd), Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/HondaRacingHPD) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/HondaRacing_HPD).

Quote:
Trent Hindman (#93 Racers Edge Acura NSX GT3 Evo) 2020 SRO GT World Challenge champion, 2019 IMSA GTD drivers’ title winner: “This wouldn’t have been possible without the help of the guys at HPD, they were with us every step of the way and made a big difference. The end of the year was bittersweet because we would have liked to have had a better finish today, but we are very happy with what we were to accomplish as a team and getting the Manufacturers’ title for Acura was very important to us as well.”