Sahlen’s 6 Hour at the Glen

From torrential downpours to clear blue skies with Nissan Altimas and Mazda Mx-5s to Lamborghini Huracans and Acura NSX GT3s, The annual Sahlen’s 6 hour of The Glen weekend provided it all.

Fans saw the combined Porche GT3 Cup challenge abandoned after a multi car crash sent 5 drivers to the infield care center and another 4 drivers to local area hospitals including one driver flown to Upstate Hospital in Syracuse. Luckily everyone was ok and the reason the one driver, Trenton Estep, was flown to Syracuse was due to him being a minor (17) and that was the closest children’s hospital.

Practices gave plenty of time for drivers to adjust setups for both dry and wet racing conditions. Although the Prototype challenge struggled to get going as the rain fell and 2 cars got together coming to the drop of the green.

The Continental Tire 120 race started out strong. The cars got about 60 minutes of racing in before the skies opened up. Multiple accidents due to the cars being on dry tires as well as a threat of lightning put the race into a red flag. Fans were asked to take cover as winds picked up and it looked like the track could see more than just rain. After a short while the skies cleared and the sun was quickly drying off the track. Cars that had switched to rain tires were switching back to dry tires. Back to racing the cars went and provided the fans about another hour worth of racing. When the checkered flag dropped Jack Roush Jr and his partner Dean Martin came out on top.

Later in the afternoon the Lamborghini Trofeo race class hit the track. A race that saw Riccardo Agostini win from the pole and Ashley Freiberg become the first woman ever to podium in the series with her 3rd place finish.

The final race was the WeatherTech Sportscar series. A series that consists of 4 classes of skilled drivers that takes on the 6 hour endurance challenge. The team of Joao Barbosa, Christian Fittipaldi and Filipe Albuquerque took the overall win in their Cadillac prototype for Mustang Sampling Racing. And New York native Andy Lally with his teammate Katherine Legge took the win in the GTD class in their Acura NSX.