Dane Cameron qualified the Turner Motorsport Z4 third on the Pirelli World Challenge grid in St. Petersburg, and ran a strong race despite a setback at the start. But the Z4’s race ended three laps before the end, leaving the car classified eighteenth in the GT class.
Cameron was held up at the race’s standing start when Tomas Enge's pole-sitting Lamborghini, which was directly in front of the Z4, had difficulty getting under way. Cameron fell to fourteenth, but carved his way through the pack, moving up to sixth before he encountered a problem—unspecified at this time—which took the car out of contention three laps from the end. However, Cameron did set the second-fastest GT lap of the race.
Enge recovered to win and set the fastest lap time. He came out on top in a late-race battle with Andy Pilgrim in a Cadillac CTS-V. The fifty-minute Sunday morning sprint was to have been the second of the weekend, but Saturday’s race was canceled because of rain.
The race marked the Turner team’s return to World Challenge after several years away from the series; Turner won championships in the series in 2003 and 2004, and scored ten race wins, forty top five finishes, and seven poles from 1998 to 2004.
Pirelli World Challenge allows cars to run in full FIA GT3 trim. The Turner team returned its TUSC GTD class Z4 to its original GT3 specs for the race. It is likely that Turner will run more World Challenge races. It will continue in TUSC, with the car returned to GTD specs.—Brian S. Morgan
