US GTC TOUR

A season of margins

The US GTC TOUR was short in calendar but not in consequence. Six meetings, with one score discarded, gave every result an unusual weight and denied any driver the comfort of an early advantage. In the end SDH-M ~ HappyKojot, driving for Side Heart Motorsports, won the Championship on 181 points. Nat Stevenson, whose season contained the finest breadth of regular front-running, was second on 179. Adam Celárek made it a notable result for Side Heart by taking third with 170 points.

There was, however, no simple tale of one driver imposing himself from the opening flag. Stevenson won at Riverside and was an immediate standard-bearer for the Shelby Cobra 289 Hardtop. MeisterJaeger, also in a Cobra, was second, while Kasperi Sirén brought the Bizzarrini GT 5300 Corsa to third. HappyKojot was eighth. It was a useful reminder of the range within the field, but the drop-score arrangement initially made the table an artificial place: the first available score for each driver was at once the one set aside.

Once the second round had given the Championship a usable shape, the central rivalry began to show. MeisterJaeger won at Stardust from HappyKojot, with Stevenson third. Stevenson and meisterJaeger consequently shared the Championship lead on 40 points, while HappyKojot was third on 37, three points behind. Stevenson had one win and a third place from the opening pair; meisterJaeger had a second and a win. It was close, but it did not yet belong to either man.

The Cobra had already taken both victories and five of the six podium places through Stardust, yet the season was not exclusively a Shelby affair. Sirén's Riverside third had put the Bizzarrini on the podium, and other machinery was waiting for its opportunity. The importance of that variety would become clear as the tour moved on.

Laguna Seca changes the balance

Laguna Seca was the first decisive turn. HappyKojot won the race, with Celárek second in the TVR Griffith Series 200 and Stevenson third. The immediate result was an equal leadership of the Championship: HappyKojot and meisterJaeger were both on 77 points, with Stevenson third on 74, three behind the leaders.

It was a curious and important moment. MeisterJaeger had established a formidable early record - a second followed by a victory - but was classified 20th at Laguna Seca. HappyKojot, by contrast, had converted an eighth place at Riverside into second at Stardust and victory at Laguna. Through three rounds he had a win and a second place among two podiums, and the general direction of his campaign was upwards. Stevenson did not yield much ground in the race itself, taking his second successive third place, but the counting system continued to make fine distinctions: his Stardust third, worth 34 points, was then the score excluded from his total.

Celárek's second place was equally significant in a quieter manner. After 14th at Riverside and fourth at Stardust, he had brought the TVR into the leading argument. He did not threaten the two Cobra men immediately, but the pattern of his later season was already suggested: a driver capable of collecting substantial points without requiring a victory to validate his pace.

At this stage, the Shelby Cobra 289 Hardtop had won all three races. Its seven podium appearances from the first nine places underlined the strength of the type, but not an invulnerability. Celárek's TVR second was the first indication that the Championship's prevailing car could be met on equal terms over an afternoon.

The leader's reply and the pursuers' progress

Paramount Ranch did not produce a Cobra victory. Brandon Hawkin won in the Chevrolet Corvette 1967, taking the Corvette's only victory of the season, but the Championship significance lay immediately behind him. HappyKojot was second and Celárek third, while Stevenson was fourth in the race.

HappyKojot thus emerged as sole Championship leader on 114 points. Stevenson was second on 108, six points behind, and Celárek third on 102, twelve behind the leader. By then HappyKojot had three top-two finishes from four starts - a second, a win and a second - and was the man who seemed least likely to allow the season to escape him. Stevenson had been exceptionally steady in race terms, with a win, two thirds and a fourth, yet Paramount Ranch became his current discarded result under the one-score rule. The effect was to preserve a narrow contest rather than let a sequence of solid placings become a decisive accumulation.

Celárek's third place was his second podium in succession, and it gave Side Heart two drivers occupying first and third in the Championship. His TVR had not won, but it had now shown itself at Laguna Seca and Paramount Ranch with sufficient authority to change the character of the front of the field.

The other winners added texture to a season otherwise shaped by Cobra regularity. Hawkin's Paramount Ranch success was followed by eighth places at Watkins Glen and Bridgehampton, leaving him eighth in the final table on 124 points. His was a compact campaign, only four starts, but one which demonstrated that the Chevrolet could seize its occasion. Elsewhere, FMG built fourth place in the final Championship on 147 points through a notably dependable series of classified results, including fourth at Riverside and sixth at Stardust, Laguna Seca, Watkins Glen and Bridgehampton. He did not reach the podium, but in a championship of varying attendance his persistence had considerable value.

Watkins Glen restores Stevenson

The penultimate meeting at Watkins Glen transformed the arithmetic. Florian Masse won in the Ferrari 250 GTO Series II, a welcome Ferrari success after fourth at Laguna Seca, and Stevenson followed him home in second. Hayley Smith's third gave the TVR another podium. HappyKojot did not start, and that absence became the result discarded from his record at that point.

Stevenson took the Championship lead on 145 points, four ahead of HappyKojot on 141. Celárek, fourth in the race, remained third on 133, twelve behind Stevenson. It was Stevenson's second top-two result of the season and his fourth podium in five rounds, a record of presence and restraint rather than a succession of victories. The Riverside winner had never been far from the front: first, third, third, fourth and second. In a series governed by a discarded score, this was the strongest possible case for a title founded on consistency.

Masse's victory was his only podium in four starts, but it mattered beyond the immediate trophy. The Ferrari had secured the fifth different victory car of the six-round season and had supplied the winner at the one meeting where the Championship leader was absent. Smith's Watkins Glen third, followed by fourth at Bridgehampton, carried her to sixth overall on 135 points. Neither Masse nor Smith became a principal title contender, but both helped ensure that the closing stage was not merely an internal Cobra exercise.

The standings before Bridgehampton therefore had a clear, if delicate, shape. Stevenson led by four, HappyKojot was second, and Celárek remained close enough to the front to complete the pressure upon the leaders. Nothing in the season had permitted a driver to coast; the final round would not alter that.

Bridgehampton and the final reckoning

Bridgehampton provided the answer in direct form. HappyKojot won the final race in his Shelby Cobra 289 Hardtop. Celárek was second in the TVR and Stevenson third in the other leading Cobra. The three principal figures of the season thus occupied the final podium, but in the order that would decide the Championship.

HappyKojot's second victory raised him to 181 points and the title. Stevenson, third in the race, ended second in the Championship on 179, two points behind. Celárek's second place took him to 170, nine behind Stevenson and eleven behind the champion. It was an unusually neat conclusion to a contest in which the lead had moved from Stevenson after Stardust, to HappyKojot after Laguna Seca, back to Stevenson at Watkins Glen, and finally to HappyKojot at Bridgehampton.

The discarded-score rule was plainly material in the final account. HappyKojot's non-start at Watkins Glen was his discarded result; Stevenson had to discard his 31-point fourth place from Paramount Ranch. Stevenson accumulated 210 raw points across all six rounds, but his counted total was 179. HappyKojot made five starts and counted all four of his podium scores after the Watkins Glen zero was set aside. The rule did not diminish the quality of Stevenson's season, but it ensured that the Championship was judged on the five scores that remained.

HappyKojot's final record was two wins and two second places from five starts, four top-two finishes in all. Stevenson made all six starts, won once, finished second once and took three third places, for five podiums. The difference between them was therefore not one of simple regularity: Stevenson had the fuller season, while HappyKojot delivered the sharper concentration of leading results when his scores had to count. His Bridgehampton victory was an entirely fitting expression of that distinction.

Celárek deserved his third place as more than a supporting player. He completed all six rounds, with two second places and one third, and his final 170 points gave Side Heart Motorsports both the Drivers' Champion and the third-placed driver. Side Heart won the Teams' Championship with 351 points, well clear of Aggressive Snails on 208. The final Drivers' top three combined two Shelby Cobra 289 Hardtops with Celárek's TVR Griffith Series 200, a fair representation of a season in which the Cobra was the prevailing force but not the sole source of distinction.