Katherine Legge’s record as the most successful woman in Atlantic Championship history has fallen as Simona De Silvestro took her third win of the season and fourth of her career at Lime Rock, Connecticut.
Legge, who now races touring cars in DTM, won three times in the 2005 season and used her performance as a stepping stone to the old Champ Car series.
De Silvestro, a Swiss now living in Arizona, qualified on pole and led every lap on her way to a 10 second victory over John Edwards and Borja Garcia. Britain’s James Winslow finished in seventh to record his best result of the season.
It was the first time this season Winslow had represented the same team at two consecutive race meetings – he came to the Atlantic Championship to race for Conquest at Sebring but the team did not enter the second meeting at the Miller Motorsports Park and he switched to Jensen Motorsport. He was with Genoa for the double header in New Jersey and stayed with the team for Lime Rock.
After five races, Winslow now sits ninth of the 16 drivers in the standings and is the third-ranked series rookie. De Silvestro has a commanding championship lead over Edwards.
She said: “I had a good qualifying in the rain so I started on pole, which is a big advantage at pretty much every track we go to. The race was good. It looked easy, but it was pretty hard to keep the concentration up because I was kind of on my own out there.
“It was fun. It’s always fun to win like this with such an advantage. My team did a great job. They give me a car every weekend that I can win with, so I hope we can keep it up like this.”