Tuesday, July 26, 2016 – Fresno, CA – The PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports team scored their sixth podium finish of the season after a P2 finish at the Northeast Grand Prix at Lime Rock Park last weekend. The two-day weekend kicked off with a pair of practices and qualifying on Friday where drivers Robert Alon and Tom Kimber-Smith put down impressive times around the 1.5-mile Connecticut road course.

Alon went on to qualify the car P2 behind CORE Autosport’s Colin Braun. However, after CORE elected to start their second driver, Alon inherited first position for Saturday’s race.

“Qualifying went really well. I was really happy to only be one hundredth of a second off of Colin’s (Braun) fast lap,” explained Alon.

“We actually started the race in first position after CORE moved to the back, and I was able to pull a nice gap on the field. Unfortunately a badly timed yellow came out that closed the gap I had, and Starworks beat us out of the pits.”

Kimber-Smith took over driver duties with one hour and four minutes remaining and, despite being held up by the Starworks Motorsports sister car, fought Renger Van der Zande for first position for the remainder of the race.

“I really got held up in a lot of traffic which gave Renger a pretty decent gap,” said Kimber-Smith.

“I was down fourteen seconds during the final stages of the race, but once I got a clear lap, I was able to chase him down. Renger had a good race and a fast car. We were really quick throughout the weekend, but unfortunately just weren’t able to catch him on the last lap.”

After coming back from a 14-second deficit, Kimber-Smith finished a mere 0.815 seconds behind Van der Zande for second place.

Alon and Kimber-Smith now sit 13 points behind Van der Zande and Alex Popow in the PC Points Championship, but hope to gain some of those points back at the next round of the IMSA Weathertech Championship at Road America in two weeks.

“We’ve had two podium finishes in the last two races at Lime Rock and in Canada,” said Alon.

“We finished P3 at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park and P2 at Lime Rock, so I’m hoping we’ll continue to climb the podium and find ourselves on the top step at the end of the weekend at Road America.”

Round nine of the IMSA Weathertech Championship will be held in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin at Road America on August 5-7. Stay tuned for team and driver news and for all of the race details!