There’s a lot to celebrate this weekend for the No. 99 Automatic Racing camp at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.

Al Carter, making his fourth IMSA start of the season in the Aston Martin Vantage, celebrated his birthday on Friday. Saturday, he picked up the Grand Sport (GS) class victory with co-driver Steven Phillips in the four-hour Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca 240, the Saturday headliner at the Continental Tire Monterey Grand Prix.

This is the first Continental Tire Challenge win for both drivers, coming in the 61st series start for Carter and the 37th for Phillips. This is also the first victory for Automatic Racing in the series since 2008, when Jeff Segal and Jep Thornton piloted the team’s BMW M3 to victory lane in GS at Lime Rock Park.

“Steven and I have been talking about how the race was going to unfold and it pretty much happened exactly how we thought it was,” Carter said. “I was getting a little tired out there. Laguna is a tough place, but we kept digging and this the first win for our car, the first win in a long time for Automatic Racing and the first win for Steve.

“We’re feeling pretty good right now. This is unforgettable. Winning a Continental Tire Challenge is not easy, the competition in this series is so tough.”

Carter and Phillips came from the back of the pack to win, qualifying the car 12th in the 15-car field. The team ran mid-pack for the first part of the race, but by the halfway mark had moved up to the top five.

The car was positioned for a good result and was running in second when the leading No. 35 Porsche Cayman GT4 driven by Damien Faulkner suddenly slowed with 30 minutes remaining. Faulkner regained power, but not soon enough as Carter shot past him.

The No. 99 held the lead for the remaining 18 laps to close out the victory.

GS point leaders Dillon Machavern and Dylan Murcott faced a challenging race but will leave Mazda Raceway with a 16-point lead over No. 12 Bodymotion Racing Porsche Cayman GT4 co-drivers Trent Hindman and Cameron Cassels.

Hindman and Cassels finished second, while the No. 59 KohR Motorsports Ford Mustang of trio Jack Roush, Jr., Scott Maxwell and Nate Stacy. 

On a beautiful Saturday afternoon in Monterey, Mazda honored the commitment of three military veterans and their families.

In conjunction with Military Appreciation Day at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, Chase and Operation Homefront, Mazda presented two families with keys to one of the manufacturer’s vehicles of their choice, and one family with the key to a new home.

U.S. Navy Petty Officer First Class Don DeGuzeman experienced seven Western Pacific deployments spanning 12 years and one combat deployment to Afghanistan. His family, along with that of U.S. Marine Sergeant Ricardo Mendez, who was deployed to Afghanistan in 2010 and 2012, will be receiving the new Mazda vehicles.

U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Toure Williams, who enlisted in the Army to support his family and newborn child, was deployed to Afghanistan in 2013 and to this day, suffers from post-traumatic stress, nerve damage and spinal injury. Williams and his family will be receiving a mortgage-free home in Jackson, New Jersey.

“It’s our biggest dream to get a home of my own,” said Williams. “This is new beginnings, something that we as a family can work on together, make our own home that we have dreamed of.”

All six Mazda drivers from the IMSA SportsCar Challenge team Freedom Autosport joined a large assembly of Mazda executives for the presentation. A crowd of fans also gathered around to watch, as the awards were given during the fan grid walk ahead of the Continental Tire Challenge race.

Liam Dwyer, one of the six Freedom Autosport drivers, lost his left leg in Afghanistan after stepping on an explosive in 2011 and participated in the presentation, standing with the families and helping deliver the awards.

It’s been a rollercoaster of a season for SportsCar Challenge teammates Pierre Kleinubing and Roy Block, but the duo finally pulled out the Street Tuner (ST) victory Saturday evening at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.

Before the victory, Kleinubing and Block had finished on the podium only twice this season with two third-place finishes, the most recent coming in the series’ last race at VIRginia International Raceway last month.

This is also the first year that the two drivers have been paired together and the first full season for Block in the Continental Tire Challenge. Kleinubing posted a blazing lap in qualifying to start the No. 75 C360R Audi S3 from the pole, but the car fell to mid-pack and the team battled back.

“We got a little unlucky in the middle with the yellows, but then we got lucky again with the yellows in the end,” Kleinubing said. “I just had more traction. My car’s all-wheel drive, and with the Continentals, it seemed to be the quick combination today. I was able to launch out of the slow corners better and that’s how I got around the guys. At the end, we were all running the same pace, but I had a gap.”

“With the track record we’ve had with this car, it’d probably be the last car you’d pick to win the four-hour race and here we are. This proves how much work C360R has done lately. We probably have one of the best cars in the paddock right now.”

While C360R has one victory so far this year in the GS class, this is the team’s first ST win since Kyle Gimple and Paul Holton claimed the checkered flag in 2015 at Road Atlanta.

The ST class provided thrilling action for the duration of the race, with the top cars trading the lead 10 times. In the No. 26 Freedom Autosport Mazda MX-5, Liam Dwyer and Andrew Carbonell, who made his 100th Continental Tire Challenge start this weekend, took home the second-place trophy and Sarah Cattaneo and Owen Trinkler followed up their VIR victory with a third-place finish in the No. 44 CRG-I-Do-Borrow Nissan Altima.

Despite early mechanical issues with the No. 56 Murillo Racing Porsche Cayman that removed the car from contention for the victory, Eric Foss retained the ST championship lead with a 13th-place finish alongside co-driver Justin Piscitell, who replaced the injured Jeff Mosing for the remainder of the season. Foss holds a 16-point lead over the No. 17 RS1 Porsche of Spencer Pumpelly and Nick Galante heading into the final race of the season at Road Atlanta on Oct. 6.

With an IMSA SportsCar Championship Prototype class title in sight, Ricky Taylor and the No. 10 Konica Minolta Cadillac DPi-V.R. team put its closest championship competitors on notice in qualifying Saturday for the AMERICA’S TIRE 250 at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, the penultimate round of the season.

Ricky Taylor – who enters the weekend with a sizeable, 26-point lead alongside brother and co-driver Jordan Taylor – scored his fifth TOTAL Pole Award of the season, lapping the 2.238-mile Mazda Raceway circuit in one minute, 16.853 seconds (104.833 mph). That lap was 0.829 seconds ahead the team’s closest championship competitor and second-place qualifier, the No. 5 Mustang Sampling Cadillac DPi-V.R. of Christian Fittipaldi.

“Tomorrow is going to be really important for the points, we need to keep our noses clean and get through safely,” said Ricky Taylor. “We want to win more than anything. We want to go to Petit [Le Mans] with another win under our belt and go for the win there.

“We’ve had a lot of fast cars here at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca and I think this Cadillac is really strong this weekend. That’s what I love about our Konica Minolta guys. They keep looking for more speed and they keep finding it. It makes my brother, Jordan, and my job easier to go out there and execute. It takes a lot of the pressure off.”

The No. 10 team also topped the charts in two of the weekend’s three practice sessions. Their closest competition Sunday, however, may come from their championship rivals.

While Fittipaldi’s lap of 1:17.682 (103.175 mph) fell short of the pole, he and co-driver Joao Barbosa have one win and four podium finishes on the season. The duo enters Mazda Raceway trailing 258-232 in the Prototype standings and needs a top-five finish to remain championship eligible if the points-leading Taylors were to win the race.

The No. 31 Whelen Cadillac DPi-V.R. of Dane Cameron and Eric Curran also enters the weekend mathematically in contention for the championship, 31 points back, and will roll off the grid fourth.

Rounding out the top three was Marc Goossens in the No. 90 VISIT FLORIDA Racing Ligier LM P2, with a lap of 1:17.730 (103.651 mph). It was a season-best qualifying effort for the Daytona Beach-based team that recently suffered damage to its race shop during Hurricane Irma. Goossens will be joined Sunday by co-driver Renger van der Zande.