Michael Marsal Returns to Monterey for IMSA Sprint with Turner Motorsport
After a pair of endurance events that featured 36 hours of racing from just two races at Daytona and Sebring, Michael Marsal will move to the sprint mindset this weekend as the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship heads West to Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. The iconic Monterey peninsula track is full of history for Marsal, who will once again team with Turner Motorsport co-driver Markus Palttala in the No. 97 Alvarez & Marsal/IHG Rewards Club BMW GT3. Not only is Sunday’s 2-hour sprint race a dramatically shorter race than the opening two rounds, it will also feature a different format as just the GTD and LMPC classes will take to the track simultaneously rather than the full four-class format utilized for most of the IMSA events. Marsal first raced a GT-class machine at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca GT in 2013 for Turner Motorsport, scoring second place to take his second podium of that season. Last year, Marsal posted a strong qualifying result and an even better race performance as he moved from 11th on the grid up to fourth before turning the car over to Palttala. With less traffic to contend with on Sunday, and a lot of experience behind the wheel of both GTD and LMPC class machinery, Marsal anticipates a fun race as IMSA returns to the legendary track. “It is fun to have this kind of format because you are spending more time driving the car and less time looking in your mirror for the prototypes and GTLM cars,” said Marsal. “We will still have traffic, but it’s much easier to manage which is good because this is not that big of a track.” The 2016 IMSA season has featured the debut of all-new machinery for the Turner Motorsport effort as the GT3-specifiation BMW M6 made a solid debut at Daytona to open up the year. With a clean-sheet design, the M6 is a vastly different character from the Z4 that Marsal raced to victory with last year. “The Z4, with its short wheelbase and a lot of downforce, was small and nimble and the handling was fantastic,” said Marsal. “But the BMW M6 GT3 carries a lot more speed and hopefully it will translate well at Laguna. The Turner guys have had some very good days at this track and hopefully we can add to that on Sunday.”
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