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

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.

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Adam Sinclair

NHRA, IHRA, Motocross and other forms of motorsports Staff writer
About Me: Adam has been a race fan since the first time he went through the tunnel under the Daytona International Speedway almost 30 years ago. He has had the privilege of travelling to races all across the state of Florida (as well as one race in Ohio), watching nearly everything with a motor compete for fame and glory, as well as participating in various racing schools to get the feel of what racecar drivers go through every week. Adam has spent the last three years covering motorsports for Examiner.com., where he had the opportunity to see the racing world from behind the scenes as well as the grandstands. He invites everyone to follow him on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus, and looks forward to sharing his enthusiasm for all things racing with the readers of SpeedwayDigest.com.Be sure to tune in for his weekly sports talk program, Thursday Night Thunder, where he discusses the latest in motorsports news with drivers, crew members, and fans. The show takes place every Thursday at 8:00 pm EST on the Speedway Digest Radio Network.