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***Lamborghini claimed its first overall victory in top-level IMSA competition following a dominant performance by the No. 9 Pfaff Motorsports Lamborghini Temerario GT3 in Sunday’s Michelin GT Challenge at Virginia International Raceway. ***Andrea Calderelli, who gave the new-for-2026 car its first pole in global competition on Saturday, combined with fellow Lamborghini factory driver Sandy Mitchell to lead 69 of the 84 laps of the race, which featured only a single full-course caution. ***It marked Pfaff’s 14th WeatherTech SportsCar Championship class win and the fourth time that the Canadian squad, led by Steve Bortolotti, won back-to-back races, the last coming at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park and Lime Rock Park, also in the GTD Pro class, in 2022. ***Caldarelli and Mitchell jumped from seventh to third in the GTD Pro points standings, just 56 points behind leaders Connor De Phillippi and Neil Verhagen, who finished fifth in their No. 1 Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT3 EVO. Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports drivers Nicky Catsburg and Tommy Milner remain second in the standings, 23 points back, in a race that Milner characterized as “bit of an embarrassing day for us.” ***Both pit stops for the No. 4 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R had hiccups. An problem with the door led to a one-minute plus first stop, while a refueling issue in the second and final stop forced Milner to go on an energy conservation run en route to a sixth place finish, behind the GTD class winning No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo. ***Milner said: “We should have been probably a P2 on the road. Instead, we ended sixth and behind the BMW. So not a good day for the whole team with too many mistakes. We can’t have days like that and we have got to be better than that.” ***Teammate Alexander Sims, meanwhile, escaped injury in a scary, second lap accident when he lost control of the No. 3 Corvette over a curb in the Esses following slight side-to-side contact with the No. 77 AO Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R Evo of Harry King and careened into the tire barriers. No further action was called by IMSA race control on the incident. ***Sims said: “Up until that point, there were multiple cars side by side for many corners. I don’t think it was overly aggressive, honestly. We’re all racing hard but pretty fair. I put myself in that situation by having a poor qualifying yesterday. You’re in the pack and it’s racing up through the Esses, and we don’t get a chance to practice these situations.” ***Ford Racing emerged with its first double podium finish of the season, led home by the No. 64 Ford Mustang GT3 EVO of Ben Barker and Dennis Olsen, marking that car’s best result of the season. “It was an amazing double podium this weekend for the Mustang GT3 here at VIR,” said Ford Racing global sports car motorsports program manager Alex Allmandinger. “Following up on the 1-2 Mustang GT4 finish yesterday in Michelin Pilot Challenge, it’s been another really strong week for the Mustangs.” ***The No. 77 AO Porsche of Nick Tandy was handed incident responsibility in the final hour for contact with the No. 14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3 of Ben Barnicoat, who was forced to briefly stop on track in order for the car’s front grille to clear itself of grass. Both of the Lexus entries struggled all weekend, finishing seventh (GTD Pro) and ninth (GTD) in class. ***Barnicoat said: “Jack [Hawksworth] and the engineers pulled off a great strategy to sort of get us to mid-pack which was pretty remarkable. We came out into a pretty thick battle in that last hour there, which was pretty fun to be a part of until it wasn’t. The Porsche made contact, sending me off, and without a yellow, that made anything more than a P7 unlikely. I’m disappointed it ended that way after a pretty heroic strategy and start of the race from the Vasser Sullivan team and Jack. Just a tough weekend from start to end here at VIR.” ***Winward Racing became the first team since Vasser Sullivan to score three consecutive GTD race wins, a feat achieved by the Lexus squad in 2020 with class wins in the COVID-era summer-time races at Daytona and Sebring, plus Road America. ***It marked the team’s fifth consecutive class podium finish at VIR, the longest active track podium streak in any IMSA class. ***Russell Ward praised the efforts of race control in its continued crackdown on driving standards. Drive-through penalties were called on both the No. 45 Wayne Taylor Racing Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 of Danny Formal and Tom Gamble’s No. 27 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo, which had contact with the No. 57 Mercedes-AMG on separate occasions in the final hour. ***Ward said: “It’s nice to see Beaux [Barfield, race director] really standing up for what he said in the drivers’ briefing. ‘If you don’t leave racing room, if you push somebody off, you’re going to get a penalty.’ I guess there were some earplugs being worn today.” ***Ellis and Ward took over the GTD points lead as a result of their fourth class win of the season, and are now 36 points ahead of the Turner Motorsport duo of Robby Foley and Patrick Gallagher, with Eduardo Barrichello slipping from first to third, 56 points back on the Mercedes-AMG duo. ***The No. 96 Turner BMW ended up with a second place finish amid the late-race chaos. “It was the most blue-collar second place you could get,” said Gallagher. “We probably weren’t the fastest car; we definitely weren’t the second-fastest car either, but the guys and girls at Turner Motorsport do such a great job at just getting and maximizing everything we can.” ***The GTD pole-sitting No. 81 DragonSpeed Corvette of Casper Stevenson was an early victim of damage from contact with the No. 34 Conquest Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo of Lorenzo Patrese, who was served with a drive-through. However, Stevenson’s Corvette lost five laps in the garage undergoing repairs to the car’s steering system. ***Stevenson said: “I went into Turn 1, Turn 2 and Turn 3 still in the lead. The Conquest car was side by side with me and I left him space at the apex as we were told to do. On corner exit he just smashed me off the track. Unluckily at that angle, it broke the steering arm… The first thing that the race director told us this morning was to leave space. It was literally the first thing he said at 8:30 a.m. I think 90 percent of the grid [took] it on, but there’s a few that [didn’t]. It just causes so much damage and frustration.” ***Patrese and co-driver Albert Costa rebounded from the penalty to be in podium position until being forced to make a late stop for an energy top-top, dropping to a seventh place class finish. ***The No. 16 Myers Riley Motorsports Mustang, which had an opening lap off-course incident with Sheena Monk, lost more than 20 laps behind the wall with electrical issues before returning to action later in the opening hour. The No. 66 Gradient Racing Mustang also faced woes in the form of a left-front puncture on Corey Lewis’ out lap after the car’s first scheduled stop. ***Next up for the WeatherTech Championship is the Battle on the Bricks, the first regular-length two-hour and 40-minute race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway since 2023. All four classes will be back in action for the penultimate round of the season on Sept. 18-20.