AGT Inter-Americas Challenge

TOOELE, Utah - It’s summer time and the heat is on in the American GT Challenge series. As the series heads toward its first-ever appearance at the new Miller Motorsports Park in Utah, no fewer than four drivers can leave the picturesque facility with the lead in the championship chase.

The AGT Challenge brings together American muscle cars from several forms of racing through a comparatively simple set of rules based upon power-to-weight ratios. Ford Mustangs, Chevrolet Camaros and Corvettes and Oldsmobile Cutlasses that formerly raced in the now-defunct Trans Am Series and the now defunct AGT class of the Rolex Sports Car Series can compete against cars legal for the Sports Car Club of America’s GT1 class.

The V-8 and V-6 powered cars have been crowd pleasers everywhere they’ve raced this season.

And, as the series looks toward the Aug. 12-13 event at Miller Motorsports Park, the championship race is a little clearer.

AGT Notes:

• Edison Lluch, the 2005 champion, leads the standings with 93 points. Joey Scarallo is next with 85. Dave Machavern, the former Rolex Series AGT co-champ, is third with 75 tallies and Jack Busch has 71. All four have a mathematical chance to lead the standings after the race at Miller.
• All AGT events consist of two heat races. When Lluch won the second heat race at Lime Rock Park last race, it broke a string of five straight heat wins by Joey Scarallo.
• Between them, Lluch and Scarallo have won eight heats this season, but Machavern is the only driver in the top four with top-10 finishes in all eight heats this season.
• Total points earned in the two heat races and other point programs determine the overall weekend winner. John Reisman, who sits sixth in the standings, is the only driver to take an overall win away from both Lluch and Scarallo this season. Reisman won the overall scoring for the second race at Lime Rock.
• Lluch’s pole position in the second heat race at Lime Rock is important because he used a different engine configuration from what he has used in the past. The different engine displacement forced him to set his Corvette at a heavier weight. The result was that Lluch broke his own track record set in 2005, but by only .002 of a second. This confirms that the rules are written fairly. The AGT has taken several rulebooks from different sanctioning bodies that featured these types of cars and conformed the disparate groups, via a power-to-weight ratio formula, to a level playing field. This gives each car, regardless of the original sanctioning body, displacement of the motor or body configuration the opportunity to run up front.
• Goodyear is the sole tire supplier for the AGT. And here is why: Each team is offered a choice of three different wheel sizes and the choice between bias-ply and radial tires. Teams competing for the Inter-Americas GT Championship each year are challenged by climates ranging from the potential for cold, rain and sometimes with snow and sleet mixed together in the early spring in Canada to the heat and humidity of Puerto Rico, plus the high altitude and dryness of Utah over the course of a season. There is only one tire company in the world with the range of sizes and selection of compounds to afford teams the opportunity to race full out throughout the season no matter the conditions and that company is Goodyear. The teams have been pleased with the tires supplied by Goodyear, but they were especially pleased with the performance of Goodyear distributor Competition Tire East, of Reading, Pa. Despite the heavy rains that soaked and flooded the northeastern US during the week prior to the second race at Lime Rock, the Goodyear Eagles tires were at the track on time.