BMW Wins Lime Rock On Perfect Strategy By No. 97 Turner Team

An eventful 36 hours at Lime Rock Park ended in a somewhat unexpected way on the home track for Turner Motorsport and driver Michael Marsal, and for returning driver Dane Cameron: atop the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship GT Daytona podium after a victory in Saturday’s Northeast Grand Prix.

The team made just one pit stop in the two-hour, 40-minute race on the 1-474-mile circuit. Running, “(fuel) mappings we have never really run to see what we could save,” Cameron brought the No. 97 Alvarez & Marsal/IHG Rewards Club BMW Z4 across the finish line 3.505 seconds ahead of Jeroen Bleekemolen in the No. 33 ViperExchange.com Dodge Viper SRT GT3-R to score the first victory of the season for the Turner team and the first TUDOR Championship victory ever for Marsal.

It was the second win of the season for Cameron, who took a Prototype class victory at Detroit in May alongside co-driver Eric Curran in the No. 31 Whelen Engineering/Team Fox Corvette DP for Action Express Racing. Cameron, who won the GTD title with Turner in 2014, was pinch-hitting for regular driver Markus Palttala, who had another commitment this weekend.

The victory capped a trying couple of days for the team. In Friday’s morning practice session, Marsal heavily crashed the No. 97 BMW, forcing the team to utilize a local repair shop and work into the early morning hours in order to be ready for the race.

The second-place run for the No. 33 team was the best of the season for Bleekemolen and co-driver Ben Keating, topping a previous best result of sixth last time out in the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen. The ViperExchange.com team’s sister, No. 93 program has taken victories in two of this season’s three Tequila Patrón North American Endurance Cup races to date.

Third place went to the No. 007 Royal Purple/Orion Energy/LaSalle Solutions/PassTime USA Aston Martin V12 Vantage co-driven by Christina Nielsen and Kuno Wittmer for the TRG-AMR team. It was the third podium result of the season for Nielsen, who has unofficially moved into second in the GTD driver standings. She trails co-leaders Christopher Haase and Dion von Moltke by just five points, 171-166.

A turning point in the race came right at the halfway point, when Haase – the GTD race leader – crashed in the No. 48 Castrol EDGE Audi R8 LMS after contact coming onto the front straight with overall leader Conor Daly in the No. 38 Ric-Man Construction/GO-PUCK/Braille Batteries ORECA FLM09. The contact sent both leaders hard into the tire barrier and out of the race.

The next round for the TUDOR Championship is the Continental Tire Road Race Showcase at Road America on Sunday, August 9. The race will be televised live 3 p.m. ET.

· The top four positions in the GTD race were occupied by four different manufacturers. BMW took the victory with the No. 97 team, followed by Dodge with the No. 33, Aston Martin with the No. 007 and Porsche with a fourth-place performance by Ian James and Mario Farnbacher in the No. 23 Heart of Racing Porsche 911 GT America from Team Seattle/Alex Job Racing.

· TOTAL Pole Award winner von Moltke led every lap of his stint in the No. 48 Paul Miller Racing Audi from the drop of the green flag until he pitted to hand the car over to Haase just past the one-hour mark in the race.

· In the debut race for Compass360 Racing’s No. 76 AERO Advanced Paint Technology/Children’s Tumor Foundation Audi R8 LMS, co-drivers Ray Mason and Pierre Kleinubing combined to earn an eighth-place GTD result.

Dane Cameron, Driver – No. 97 Turner Motorsport BMW Z4

“We were running (fuel) mappings that we had never really run to see what it could save. I was also trying to try and lift the pedal as much as I could. It was completely different than Mosport (in the No. 31 Prototype), where I was flat out and as fast as I needed to go. We just focused on the pace I needed to run and the laps I needed to run. We got a bit of a gap, so I could focus on the numbers that I needed, and save fuel to where the guys in the stand were happy. It was making me pretty uncomfortable, but luckily, we had saved enough during the first part of the stint to go as long as we did here at Lime Rock.”

Michael Marsal, Driver – No. 97 Turner Motorsport BMW Z4

“What a weekend. This is my home track, the first time I ever drove a racecar, (was) here. First time I ever won a race, (was) here. Yesterday, I wound up in the wall for the first time here. It was tough. I think the back right side of the car was an inch shorter. We didn’t think it would get fixed. It was busted up pretty bad. When you have everyone, your mom and dad, everyone you love, and this is Turner’s home track, it’s tough. They worked all night on the car, literally. Hat’s off to Dane. Dane is the man. He took it from there.”

Ben Keating, Driver – No. 33 ViperExchange.com Dodge Viper SRT GT3-R

“The Viper has done well, but it’s always been the sister car. Our best finish so far has been sixth, so it was really important for us to get a good finish here. This track is so much different than every other track we go to. They call it the ‘Bullring of sports car racing.’ Our normal issue has been that we’ve got slow top speed, but here, I think we’re the only car that didn’t have to brake for Turn 7. We had really good top speed, as well, coming through that last turn. It’s a good result.”

Christina Nielsen, Driver – No. 007 TRG-AMR Aston Martin V12 Vantage

“We definitely needed a weekend like this. Overall, we struggled from the start. We were down on track time due to mechanical failures that no one could have predicted in the team. It was just bad luck. To finish where we finished today was a superb performance by us, the team, the mechanics and the engineers. The car was good. It was a team effort, and I honestly believe that we’re going to be strong from now on.”

Christopher Haase, Driver – No. 48 Paul Miller Racing Audi R8 LMS

“First of all, the race went pretty good for us. We had a nice, balanced car. The team did a fantastic job on that, we had a great start and everything was going well right up until the point of the incident. There were three PC cars around me and I don’t think the one saw me because when I turned into the corner he just hit me very hard. It was not like a touch or something and then you go off. Right when he hit me the car was broken and then we just went straight into the barrier. It is always difficult to judge as a driver, but from my point of view, the guy was a little optimistic.”

Contact:

nsiebens@imsa.com

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