Ferrari rebounds for dominant victory at Nashville

Ferrari turned around its bad luck from Saturday with a flag-to-flag victory in Sunday’s SRO GT America powered by AWS event on the streets of Nashville.

Bret Curtis jumped into the lead at the green flag in Scuderia Corsa’s No. 62 Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo 2020 and never let off in an event slowed by a pair of lengthy cautions.

The Scuderia Corsa team worked until 3 a.m. getting the car back in pristine condition for the second race, after the crash during Race 1, and the rebuilt Ferrari never missed a beat.

Curtis took the lead at the start while competitors went four-wide behind him exiting the Korean War Veterans Memorial Bridge. The Ferrari got away unscathed, but an incident behind Curtis brought out an 18-minute caution for cleanup.

The green waved again with 17:10 remaining. Curtis got away clean with a competitor in close pursuit. The Ferrari was still ahead and gaining ground when a race-ending caution waved with 10 minutes remaining in the 40-minute event. Curtis managed to complete 19 laps, winning by 1.052-seconds.

“Street courses are always my favorite, and this win ranks right up there,” Curtis said. “The team gave me such a good car all weekend long. It was a great race right up until it became a bad race yesterday – and it was my fault. It was a big hit on the car, and the team did such a good job. They rebuilt the entire front end last night and made it perfect. It was a real good car today, and I owe the team.”

Curtis was impressed with the ambiance of the entire Music City Grand Prix – Scuderia Corsa’s first foray into GT America.

“Nashville did a great job with the track, and it was awesome and super fun,” Curtis said. “This was one of the very best fan-experience races that I ever had, and I’ve been able to do Le Mans and all the IMSA races. This was unbelievable. The fans have been tremendous, and it was so cool to see everybody out here rooting us on. I felt I owed the fans to some extent, with the only Ferrari out there.”