Andy Lally doesn’t hide his feelings when it comes to the 3.4-mile strip of pavement in Upstate New York known as Watkins Glen International.
“Watkins Glen is my favorite racetrack on the planet for a number of reasons,” says Lally, who drives the No. 44 Magnus Racing Audi R8 LMS GT3 in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GT Daytona (GTD) class. “It is my home state of New York and one of the most exciting racetracks to drive around the planet.
“There’s never a driver that shows up at Watkins Glen that does not like the amazing speed and rhythm that is found at The Glen. It’s the best case in the world for making hairpins illegal, because you just never stop with an awesome flow and pace around there.”
WGI seems to love him back, too. Lally heads into the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen on Sunday riding a streak of five consecutive podium finishes in the six-hour race, dating back to a third-place showing in the last GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series race in 2013, the year before the merged WeatherTech Championship began.
Last year, he and then-co-driver Katherine Legge took the GTD class victory in an Acura NSX GT3 for the team now known as Meyer Shank Racing. This year, Legge is paired with Alvaro Parente in the No. 86 Acura for Meyer Shank, while Lally has rejoined Magnus Racing alongside team owner/driver John Potter and the team’s endurance specialist, Andrew Davis.
The Magnus team has its own podium streak going at Watkins Glen, with four consecutive podiums from 2013 through 2016 with Lally and Potter sharing the controls. Magnus Racing did not compete in the WeatherTech Championship last year.
Perhaps what’s even more remarkable is in the last three years, Lally has successfully driven three very different race cars at Watkins Glen. He drove a Porsche 911 in 2015, an Audi R8 in 2016 and the Acura NSX last year.
“I didn’t realize that,” Lally says. “So, that’s three podiums in a row with a Porsche, an Audi and an NSX, and now we’re back there in an Audi. Maybe there is some sort of rhythm or something that I’ve found, even with the repave and the changing of the curbing and whatnot through the years – or maybe it’s just that I’m so happy to race around there that something clicks.”
Something always has clicked at The Glen for Lally, who owns four career Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen victories. His affection for racing and the racetrack goes all the way back to his childhood.
“All I wanted to do as a kid, from a very, very early age, was race cars,” Lally says. “Those cars, though, happened to be stock cars. Growing up on Long Island and not coming up through a racing family, I liked what I saw on TV. I liked what my Matchbox cars were, and those were stock cars.
“I grew up a massive NASCAR fan. The Richard Pettys and the Neil Bonnetts and the Bobby Allisons were my early heroes. There was points in my life where I wanted to be a part of the Alabama Gang and I couldn’t even point to Alabama on a map.
“My love for road racing came from watching the Bud at The Glen in 1988 when Ricky Rudd and Rusty Wallace were battling it out in the waning laps. I got hooked on road course racing. At the time, I really didn’t even know what Prototypes or GT cars were. I just knew that there’s a place that looks like my go-kart track that’s on TV that they race NASCAR. That is something that I want to do. Watkins Glen was really the first road course that I was able to discover and learn about. That helped start my education on road course racing as a whole.”
Because of that, and their tremendous record at Watkins Glen, this weekend is a big one for Lally and the Magnus team.
“Next to the 24 Hours of Daytona, that’s the most important race of the year for me,” Lally says. “I think John Potter would come close to echoing those sentiments as well. We’ve put so much into trying to win that race. Although I was able to win it last year with Meyer Shank Racing, the last four years prior to that, we had two thirds and two seconds with Magnus Racing.
“It’s definitely been a buildup and a desire for John Potter, who in such a short career has won Daytona, has won Indianapolis, has won Sebring and has won in so many other iconic tracks around the nation that he definitely wants to add Watkins Glen to that list. We as a team are working as hard as we can to make that happen.”
The Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen will be televised live in its entirety on FS1 beginning at 9:30 a.m. ET, with live IMSA Radio coverage available on IMSA.com, RadioLeMans.com and SiriusXM Radio. Tickets are on sale now at TheGlen.com.