WCS: Tristan Herbert and Brimtek Motorsports win in St. Petersburg

Posted: 29 Mar 2011 07:50 AM PDT

Late last year, Tristan Herbert finished 11th in his debut World-Challenge race. Over the weekend he took the Brimtek Motorsports VW GTI to a first ever win in the WC. With a lot of movement throughout the race, Tristan was able to take his 3rd place start to a win over Lawson Aschenbach by almost a second. Gallery after the jump!

“This is the perfect example of why people get involved with local programs in SCCA,” Herbert said. “That’s where I started, with a driver’s school with the [Washington, D.C. Region] and worked my way up. This is exactly why you get into racing, and what you can do with it if you stick to it and work really hard. It’s awesome, it hasn’t even hit me yet.”

At the start, our bud Chip Herr and Herbert quickly overtook Aschenbach, with Tristan moving past Herr by the third lap.

With a caution out, the Brimtek Motorsport team made a costly mistake, went around the pace car and made a full lap up on their competitors. The class was not given the order to move around the pace car.

Officials called Herbert into pits and let him back out after Chip Herr went by.

At first this looked bad but Herbert quickly reeled in Herr by lap 22 and went by. Aschenbach was not done yet, as he was on the move but would end up 2nd, 0.737 off the VW GTI. Herr ended up 13th overall after issues hit the Mazda RX-8.

“I was in first place and we had the full course caution,” Herbert explained. “One of the officials had told our crew chief to wave us by, and just like yesterday we started to go by. I didn’t see anybody following, and the next thing I know I’m totally in the wrong spot. I know I’m in the wrong spot, I’m starting to panic, my crew is calming me down. They know the problem and they’re trying to stage me. I get pulled into the penalty box, and that was ok, they were trying to get me in the right spot. As they’re letting me go I see Chip Herr go by, and all of a sudden I have to get my head back in the game and get right back up there. I was able to get around Chip and make it happen. It was a tough one.”

Patrick Seguin 3rd, Devin Cates 4th in his Cutaway Creations/Cates Engineering Volkswagen GTI and 5th went to Ray Mason.

Set your DVR’s for Saturday, April 9 4:30 PM ET to catch all the action on VERSUS.