Scuderia Corsa Ferrari turns to Sprint Cup at Mid-Ohio

Ferrari will return to IMSA Sprint Cup competition this weekend when it visits the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course for Sunday’s Sports Car Challenge. Cooper MacNeil and Toni Vilander will share Scuderia Corsa’s No. 63 Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo 2020 for the seventh round of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, and fifth for the special season-long competition for the races of two-hours, 40-minutes and shorter on the GTD schedule. The two drivers are ninth in the standings for the regular season title, but fifth in the Sprint Cup competition with only three races remaining. Their best finish was second in July’s Grand Prix of Sebring – an event that didn’t count for regular-season points. The team is coming off a disappointing ninth-place finish in the recent six-hour race at Road Atlanta. Vilander was running fourth in the Ferrari he shared with MacNeil and Westphal when he was bumped off course and then collected by a DPi competitor, ending their race with only 12 minutes remaining. That was the second-consecutive late-race disappointment for the team, which retired from the event at VIR with engine trouble while running second during the final hour. The most recent victory for Ferrari at Mid-Ohio was in the ALMS GT class in 2010, won by Jaime Melo and Gianmaria Bruni in a Risi Competizione Ferrari F430 GTE. Dominik Farnbacher and Dirk Mueller won in GT2 in 2008, driving a Tafel Racing Ferrari F430 GTE. This weekend’s race opens with a one-hour practice on Friday evening at 6:10 p.m. (all times ET). Saturday’s lone activity is a one-hour practice session beginning at 10:55 a.m. GT Daytona qualifying begins at 8 a.m. on Sunday morning, setting the grid for the Sports Car Challenge that is set to start at 2:05 p.m.