Team Falken Tire rolled the dice and came up a winner in Sunday’s rain-plagued Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen, taking the checkered flag in the GT Le Mans (GTLM) class with virtually no fuel in the tank as Round 6 of the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship finished under caution.
The No. 17 Porsche 911 RSR of Wolf Henzler and Bryan Sellers went to the lead at Watkins Glen International as the other contenders in the GTLM class pitted following a 14-minute red flag delay.When racing resumed with one hour remaining, Henzler managed to keep the advantage while a competitive battle raged for second. Running low on fuel, Henzler was saved by a final caution with eight minutes, 40 seconds remaining that caused the race to finish under the yellow flag. That preserved the team’s first TUDOR Championship triumph of 2015, and also gave them the victory in the third round of the Tequila Patrón North American Endurance Cup.
Coming off an overall victory in the recent 24 Hours of Le Mans, Earl Bamber rebounded from a pair of spins to finish second in the No. 912 Porsche North America Porsche 911 RSR co-driven by Joerg Bergmeister. Bamber passed Auberlen to take second following a final restart with 16 minutes remaining, and closed to within two seconds of Henzler at the final caution.
Auberlen and Dirk Werner took third in the No. 25 BMW Team RLL IHG Rewards Club BMW Z4 GTLM. It was the third consecutive podium finish, unofficially putting them into a tie for the GTLM points lead with Antonio Garcia and Jan Magnussen, who finished fourth in the No. 3 Corvette Racing Chevrolet Corvette C7.R. Each team has 157 points.