Acura Cleans Up US Touring Car Racing With Sweeps In Both World Challenge And Koni Challenge
The two largest US-based touring car series took off to nearly identical starts this season, with key Acura drivers playing on both sides. SCCA Pro-Racing's Speed World Challenge Touring Car series has been going head to head with Grand-Am's Koni Challenge Street Touring class for a couple of years. While we don't hear about it as much as the recently concluded IRL/Champ Car feud, the battle for teams, sponsorship and TV coverage is just as intense. Acura has all its bases covered this year with strong teams fielding TSX models in both series.
The Koni Challenge season opened with a support race for the 24 Hours of Daytona. The i-MOTO team started with both of their cars on the front row. Pole-sitter Kuno Wittmer's throttle stuck at the start, knocking both his own and team owner Glenn Bocchino's cars out of the lead. But after some well-timed driver changes, Kuno's brother, Nick, and Peter Cunningham brought the cars home in first and second respectively. The Compass 360 Racing Team TSX driven by Travis Walker and Karl Thompson sealed the podium sweep for Acura. It was interesting to see Peter Cunningham driving in the series. He's been the SCCA Pro Racing Driver's Champion seven times over. Whether he's testing the Grand Am waters or i-MOTO just really wanted the win is hard to say.
Fear not, World Challenge fans, Cunningham and his team of orange-and-white Acuras definitely made their presence felt at Sebring. The Realtime Racing cars of Pierre Kleinubing, Kuno Wittmer and Peter Cunningham qualified first through third. They maintained that order all the way to the checker in a less-than-memorable event. Cunningham pulled up alongside his i-MOTO co-driver for a few turns late in the race, but it looked more like an attempt to log extra TV time than racing. Maybe we've just been watching too much of the horrible show Set Up, but we're looking forward to the Mazda teams stepping things up and making Realtime really fight for their wins later this season.