Sheena Monk posts another top-ten
- Sheena Monk and Felipe Fraga finished 10th in GTD at IMSA’s Laguna Seca round on May 3, giving Myers Riley Motorsports back-to-back top-10s. - Monk qualified the No. 16 Ford Mustang GT3 11th, ran as the top Bronze entry early, and the pair ended second in class. - It matters because Long Beach was also a breakthrough seventh, so the Mustang GT3 program now has real week-to-week momentum.
GTD racing is brutal because “pretty good” usually disappears into the midfield. But Sheena Monk and Felipe Fraga are starting to turn pretty good into something repeatable. At IMSA’s StubHub Monterey SportsCar Championship at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca on May 3, the Myers Riley Motorsports pair brought the No. 16 Ford Mustang GT3 home 10th in class and second among the Bronze entries. That made it two straight top-10 GTD finishes after a seventh at Long Beach. (imsa.com) ### What actually happened at Laguna Seca? Monk and Fraga didn’t luck into this one. Monk qualified 11th in GTD with a 1:23.532 lap, then kept the car clean through the messy opening laps and climbed into the Bronze lead early in the race. The team stayed in that fight through the pit cycle before finishing 10th overall in GTD and second in the Bob Akin Award classification for Bronze drivers. (racers-behindthehelmet.com) ### Why does second in Bronze matter? Because GTD is really two races layered on top of each other. There’s the overall class result, and then there’s the Bronze-driver battle tied to the Bob Akin Award, which matters a lot for lineups built around an a(racers-behindthehelmet.com) it’s a trend. (racers-behindthehelmet.com) ### Was the pace real? Basically, yes. Monk was already second among Bronze entries in qualifying, right behind Brendan Iribe’s No. 70 Inception Racing Ferrari. Then she jumped Iribe in the race and spent the opening stint controlling that part of the b(racers-behindthehelmet.com)tegy-made. (racers-behindthehelmet.com) ### Why is the Ford angle interesting? The Mustang GT3 is still building its reputation in top-level IMSA GT racing, so every clean, competitive result matters. Laguna Seca also turned into a strong weekend for the platform more broadly — Ford won GTD P(racers-behindthehelmet.com)sistency is what makes a GT3 car look healthy. (imsa.com) ### How big is this for Myers Riley? Pretty big, because this is not a giant multi-car operation hiding a midfield finish in a stack of entries. Myers Riley has to make each result count. Two straight top-10s — seventh at Long Beach, 10th at Laguna Seca — give the team something sturdier than a one-off headline. It suggests the program is settling in with Monk, Fraga, and the Mustang package. (racers-behindthehelmet.com) ### What changed from the rough start? The season opened with more bad luck, especially at Daytona, and that had a familiar feel for Monk’s recent IMSA campaigns — speed showing up, results slipping away. But Sebring hinted at progress, Long Beach delivered the breakthrough, and Laguna Seca backed it up. In racing terms, that’s the key step: not just finding pace once, but showing the floor is rising. (racers-behindthehelmet.com) ### So what should we watch next? The next question is whether this becomes a regular top-10 car on pace at different track types. Long Beach is a short street sprint. Laguna Seca is a natural-terrain road course. If the No. 16 can stay relevant across both, then Monk’s Bronze campaign and the team’s GTD season start looking a lot more serious than they did a month ago. (racers-behindthehelmet.com) ### Bottom line? Monk’s Laguna Seca result wasn’t flashy. That’s why it matters. In GTD, stacking clean weekends is how a contender appears — first quietly, then all at once. (racers-behindthehelmet.com)
