The rough terrain at William Sheridan toppled the other drivers, but proved no match for The Bull of Rooftop Racing, Aristotelis Ambatzidis. The Greek driver powered through to win with a staggering 18points, a near sweep. (The championship was stopped early after a lighting failure made track conditions unsafe, and, as a result, the Championship was worth only 21 points, not the anticipated 39). The former third place driver jumped two positions in the standings to narrowly unseat Kelly for first place. Kaplan took a surprising second place finish in the final moments of the Championship, Kelly finished with a disappointing 3rd, and Humenry ended the evening in last place.
Speed turned out to be the name of the game at William Sheridan, and with Ambatzidis blazing by the competition time and time again, team Huracán Performante clearly engineered a winning car. We spoke to Yorgos Yiannopoulos, Huracán Performante's chief engineer, about the adjustments they made to the car in preparation for the Championship:
"We sacrificed on acceleration and precision in favor of a heavy car with a lot of downforce. This meant the car wouldn't be tossed around by the gritty track surface and could take full advantage of the long straights."
While the car clearly helped, it wasn't the only thing that enabled the win. Ambatzidis showed up focused and ready to race. Right out of the gates, the driver took three 1st place finishes in the 1st Grand Prix, and after a last place hiccup in the fourth race, came back to win the fifth race and win the Grand Prix with 20 points.
In the second Grand Prix, Ambatzidis really soared, frequently lapping the other drivers to win all five races and take the Grand Prix with a perfect 25 points. While Ambatzidis was unable to sweep the evening, his 2nd place finish in the night's final event, the Combined Circuit, was enough to not only clench the Championship title by a whopping 11 points but also to take 1st in the season standings.
Ambatzidis' stellar performance and the Championship's early termination has Ambatzidis fans upset, who feel that the driver was on track to dominate the Championship and was deprived of points. Rooftop Racing plans to add a fifth championship to the season to account for the evening's lost points, but the location of which is still to be determined. Ambatzidis fans say the championship should continue at Williiam Sheridan, but as one engineer for Huracán Performante pointed out, "the engineering advantage that we achieved would be undone by the next William Sheridan Championship. By then, the other teams would correct their build". When asked if Ambatzidis felt he was denied points, he had this to say:
"Look I was racing well, and feel I could have continued to race well in the remaining events, but you never know in racing. Your luck can turn at any second, so who knows if my early performance would have continued. I'm just proud with the evening I had, especially after Beaumont. I came out here to show what I'm capable of, and that's what I did; and wherever the 5th Championship is I'm going to do the same."
The rest of the drivers struggled to find their footing on the rough track surface. "It was as if there were two races going on: one with the field for second, and one with Ambatzidis against himself for 1st," said Burt Wellington, a Rooftop Racing commentator. Kelly, the presumed favorite for the evening, walked away with 2nd place finishes in the two Grand Prix, but, after a disappointing last place finish in the Combined Circuit, Kelly finished the evening in 3rd place. When asked about what happened, the visibly frustrated Kelly brushed off reporters and declined to comment.
Kelly waives away reporters after tough 3rd place finish.
Humenry's consistent 3rd place finishes throughout the evening were not enough to place, and the former runner up dropped to last in the season standings by one point.
Kaplan had another evening of repeated, unnerving car stalls, and after tying for 3rd with Humenry in the 1st Grand Prix, he took last in the 2nd Grand Prix without registering a single point in any of the races. It appeared that it would be another upsetting 4th place finish for Kaplan, when the driver took an unexpected win in the Combined Circuit. The 8 point event was enough to catapult the driver into second place for the championship. "I'm happy to register the points, but it's very frustrating not being able to properly compete", Kaplan said about his win. When asked if his repeated car failures were an indication of a problem with the team's engineers, the driver told us that "[he's] just happy to be returning to Mercedes next season".
The Lamborghini Classic goes on hiatus for two weeks and returns for the East Village Championship at the end of August.
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