Buttonwillow, CA – Reza Arsham scored an important win at the Buttonwillow Raceway Round 7 of the United States Touring Car Championship (USTCC), winning the Sportsman class. Edgar Lau managed to win the Super Touring class, Gary Sheehan won the Touring Car class and Beau Borders took the win in the GT class.
The track configuration for this race was never before used in USTCC and the result was some extremely fast top speeds that were approaching 170 mph at times.
The Sportsman battle was huge and it was not without controversy. Arsham was driving the GoGoGear.com/Konig Wheels Honda Civic with the new Hasport/KTuned powerplant and was the quickest car in every session and found himself on pole position but the race was a different story. The other competitors turned up the speed and Arsham found himself getting caught by Andy Chittum’s LeMans Karting Mazda MX5 and Matthew Rivkin’s Cool Boxx BMW 330i. Chittum and Rivkin were battling for second place when the BMW tapped the Mazda resulting in the Mazda spinning in the Off Ramp Turn. Rivkin took after Arsham and soon caught him and forced Arsham into a mistake to claim the win. Afterwards, the stewards issued a penalty to Rivkin for the body contact and he was dropped to third place which gave the victory to Arsham. Taking second place was Brad Austin’s TNI Racing Mazda MX5 who is the current points leader.
In Super Touring, it was a BMW vs. Audi battle with the two AR-G Motorsports BMWs of Edgar Lau and Daniel Rose who were trying to beat the Cool Boxx Audi R8 of Victor Czapla. The Audi was the quickest car but Lau used his experience to put his BMW M3 in front and took the win. Czapla finished second and Rose finished third.
Gary Sheehan stretched his championship points battle in the Touring Car class with a win in the GoGoGear.com/Konig Wheels Hyundai Genesis. Sheehan’s teammate made it a 1-2, finishing second in the other GoGoGear.com/Konig Wheels Hyundai Genesis. Beau Borders put the MyRaceShop.com/Hankook FFR GTM on the top step of the podium in the GT class.
The high speed configuration really set the tone and the championship positions are more clear now for most of the classes. With one race left in the championship, a double points 2 hour race, anything can still happen at Thunderhill Raceway next month.