Riley Dickinson earned a top-five finish behind the wheel of the No. 53 Moorespeed Porsche 911 GT3 on Saturday in the IMSA Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge USA by Yokohama at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in an eventful race for the 16-year-old.
In a race full of firsts, Dickinson raced in the rain and led an IMSA race for the very first time. The difficult conditions meant that 12 of the 22 laps completed were run under full-course caution as cars slid off track and had to be retrieved.
Dickinson found himself in the front of the field for the first time in his short three-race career on the opening lap, sweeping around polesitter Roman DeAngelis in the opening corner.
Starting on the outside front row, Dickinson raced in the top two until three laps to go, when on the second of three restarts, a lapped car spun directly in front of the Moorespeed machine. Dickinson took to the grass and gravel trap in Turn 1 to avoid any contact.
Rejoining in seventh, and quickly repassing two cars for position to minimize damage, Dickinson was back to fifth and ready to recover some more ground when the third and race-ending caution flag was shown.
“This is really the first weekend that I had experience with the full wet,” Dickinson said. “It was definitely a difference. In the race, I just tried to keep focus forward and hit my marks and make sure everything was on my side of things and do my job the best I could. I had a good start and was able to get to the lead. That was pretty cool. The final restart, we know what happened. It is what it is. The car is in one piece, so we get to fight hard tomorrow.”
Dickinson will start second again in Sunday’s race based on his best lap time during the race of 1:48.101 (75.196 mph). The central Ohio weather forecast appears to be more favorable for Sunday morning.
“I’m really proud of Riley’s performance,” Moorespeed President David Moore said. “This is only his fourth session ever in the wet, and all of those have been in the last two weeks. He’s been learning quickly. We talked about the start and we knew it was going to be wet and he executed what we talked about perfectly. We were really excited about him taking the lead.”
The Moorespeed team will be right back on the track on Sunday morning, with the second race of the doubleheader at 11 a.m. EDT, and a chance for an even stronger result.
“Today he learned you don’t always get the right breaks in racing,” Moore said. “He set the second-fastest race lap so we qualified second position for tomorrow. We salvaged valuable points today after he almost got taken out of the race, or it could have been worse than it was. He had great reaction speed and did a fantastic job to save the car. It was damage control at that point and he did a great job. Tomorrow is a fresh start.”
The IMSA Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge USA by Yokohama will air live on IMSA.tv on Sunday, with pre-race beginning at 10:50 a.m. EDT. The Mid-Ohio races will be televised on NBC Sports Network on Monday, May 13 at 1 p.m. EDT in a one-hour broadcast.
