• Peter Kox led a double top-10 finish in front of home crowd in Sunday's race
• Ryan Eversley scores pair of top-10 finishes on Ohio doubleheader weekend
• Eversley solidifies hold on top-10 berth in 2017 standings

The RealTime Racing Acura NSX GT3s found progress hard to come by this weekend at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, but the driving duo of Peter Kox and Ryan Eversley did a strong job of maximizing opportunities during Rounds 6-7 of the Pirelli World Challenge campaign.

Kox, who actually debuted the Acura NSX GT3 at Mid-Ohio a year ago, posted the team's best finish of the weekend with a sixth-place run on Sunday. Eversley started the weekend with a 10th-place run on Saturday, then fought off tough competition in Sunday's 55-minute race to place eighth.

"It's almost impossible to pass here. You really need a break or a guy to make a mistake," said Kox. "So you just try to get in a good rhythm, which I was able to do, and just focus on what you need to do. I am disappointed that we didn't have a better weekend, because I know how hard the guys at Honda Performance Development, JAS Development and RealTime are working to make this a better car."

Kox made a strong move at Sunday's start, powering past a competitor to gain a pair of positions and take sixth. He closed to within a second of fifth-placed Daniel Mancinelli in the waning moments of the race, before settling for sixth. It was a strong rebound from a trying Saturday that saw Kox finish 18th after a disputed penalty for contact.

Despite the fact that Eversley finished eighth on Sunday, his ride was far from uneventful, as he battled with Cadillac's Michael Cooper for most of the race, then fought off late-race charges from the Mercedes of Ryan Dalziel and Bryan Sellers' McLaren.

"I'm not very happy with the way things turned out because I know that our guys did everything they could to give us a great car," Eversley said. "It's just frustrating when you know you have a top-five car. Our results do not show the level of commitment that all of our partners have for this program, but we will continue to work to get better. At the end of the day, we did what we could and scored some valuable championship points."

"We didn't get the results we wanted at our home track, but we ran much better on Sunday and that shows that we will have an opportunity to go forward," said NSX GT3 Project Leader Lee Niffenegger of Honda Performance Development. "This was a big weekend globally for the program, opening customer sales of the Acura NSX GT3, and we are hoping to show potential customers that this is the top-performing GT3 car."

The RealTime Racing Acura NSX GT3 program will have a week off to prepare for the homestretch of the World Challenge season, which hits the three-quarter pole August 11-13 with a pair of races at Utah Motorsports Campus in Tooele, Utah.

The Acura NSX GT3 racecar utilizes the production NSX's lightweight multi-material body with aluminum-intensive space frame, and is powered by a 3.5-liter, 75-degree, twin-turbocharged DOHC V-6 engine. The engine uses the same design specifications as the production 2017 Acura NSX, including the block, heads, valve train, crankshaft, pistons and dry-sump lubrication system. The engine is paired with a 6-speed, sequential-shift racing gearbox, delivering power to the rear wheels. The Acura NSX is produced at the Performance Manufacturing Center in Ohio.

Video recaps from this weekend's Acura Pirelli World Challenge racing activities at Mid-Ohio are being posted on the "Honda Racing/HPD" YouTube channel. Produced by the Carolinas Production Group, the video packages can be found in the 2017 HPD Trackside Video Playlist at: https://www.youtube.com/HondaRacingHPDTV.

Pirelli World Challenge Circuit:      Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course (2.258-mile road course), Lexington, Ohio Weather:  Sunny, mild, breezy, 75 degrees F Saturday                    Sunny, warm, 81 degrees F Sunday

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