Respect for the Bumps: Blackdog Speed Shop Back at Sebring

LINCOLNSHIRE, Illinois (September 19, 2023) – Blackdog Speed Shop is going from one classic road course to another as its GT America powered by AWS championship enters the closing portion of its season at Sebring International Raceway.
 
Tony Gaples is set to make his return to Sebring in Blackdog Speed Shop’s No. 5 Chevrolet Camaro GT4.R for the 15th and 16th rounds of this year’s championship. It marks the team’s first trip to the historic Florida circuit since a 2018 test in the second year of the Camaro GT4.R. Blackdog Speed Shop’s last race at Sebring was a fourth-place run for Gapes in the 2009 SPEED World Challenge GT race.
 
The beauty of Sebring is that the track layout and its rough-and-tumble surface hasn’t changed through the years. Home to Hendricks Field – a World War II airbase for B-52 training – much of the track still uses the concrete portions of the runways, most notably the frontstretch.
 
As a result, Sebring tends to test driver and machine like no other track on the GT America schedule with reliability and consistent lap times playing a huge role in the outcome of races.
 
Consistency has been a strong point for Gaples and the Blackdog team this year. The No. 5 Camaro had a perfect record of finishing races and recording points before the second of two races at the last GT America event at Road America.
 
In 14 races, Gaples has scored points in 13 of them including six top-five GT4 finishes and two podium finishes during his first full season of racing since 2020. Two more weekends like that will go a long way toward Gaples finishing fifth in the GT4 Drivers Championship.
 
The last time out for the team at Road America, Gaples posted the fastest GT4 lap in the weekend’s first race, en route to a fourth-place finish and the class pole position for Race Two.
 
Blackdog Speed Shop and the No. 5 Camaro will race in the first of two GT America races from Road America at 12:50 p.m. ET on Saturday, followed by Sunday’s second race at 8:40 a.m. ET. Live coverage of both races plus timing & scoring will be available at gtamerica.us and SRO’s GT World YouTube channel.